Back in Time
by muggleborn06
Summary: Takes place when Harry is 20 and Ginny 19. They were recently married, and when Harry is offered the chance to teach DADA and get to know his parents, he can't refuse. What he didn't count on was Ginny following him Back in Time.
1. Changes Are Coming

Disclaimer: All of the Harry Potter characters belong to the amazing J.K. Rowling and I am merely borrowing them.

A/N: I know that this is a short chapter, but I'll try to make the next one longer. I'm not sure when I'll be adding another chapter, but stay tuned!

Also, I have recently been told that A/N's are not allowed as chapters, so I've deleted them. Any of you returning readers, that is why the chapters have gone down.

…

Harry James Potter woke with a start in the dead of night. Ginny was beside him, sleeping peacefully. For a moment he could not think of what had woken him, but then he spied the phoenix watching him from the night stand. As soon as Harry saw him he was gone, leaving behind nothing but a letter. He reached over and picked it up. As soon as he touched it, he recognized the signature jerk around his navel of a portkey.

He landed in the Headmistress' office. "Ah, good morning Mr. Potter. I trust your journey here was safe?" Harry blinked in surprise. He was not expecting to leave his bed in the middle of the night to have a friendly chat with Professor McGonagall.

"Not to be rude, Professor, but why exactly have you portkeyed me here in the middle of the night?" He asked. McGonagall didn't reply. She was busy taking out a large book from her desk. It made a dull thud as she set it on the desk.

"I believe this is the answer to your question," she said.

"_The Registry of Hogwarts Professors,_" Harry read. "What does that have to do with anything?" McGonagall only flipped through the pages until she found a certain one. He nearly fell over in shock. His face stared back at him, smiling and waving. He looked more carefree than he had in a long time, and he looked healthier too. At the top of the page he saw his name, and underneath it, _Defence Against the Dark Arts: 1977-1978_. "How is this possible? That was over 20 years ago. Are you saying you're sending me back in time?"

"Harry, please listen to me," said a familiar voice. He whirled around to see Dumbledore's portrait looking at him sadly. "Before I died, I was working on a spell. My idea was to send you back in time to teach Defence Against the Dark Arts during your parents' 7th year. This spell would allow you to tell people everything about your life, but have them forget it once they left Hogwarts. No one would be able to send any letters about you, or talk about you to anyone outside of the school. It truly is a unique spell. A few weeks before I died, I finally perfected it.

Your talents in defence are admirable. I want the students to hear about the horrors of your life, and know that no matter what they go through, they should never go dark. But most of all, I want you to be able to know your parents, Harry. I want you to see your dad play quidditch, and see your mum's cleverness. I want you to be able to get to know Sirius before he knew the horrors of Azkaban, and Remus before he realized the cruelty he faced in being a werewolf. I want you to experience the life you deserve. After all you've done for our world, it's the least I could do." Harry nodded mutely, trying not to cry. He couldn't believe he was actually going to meet his parents. It was all he had ever wanted. Then he seemed to remember something.

"What about Ginny? And quidditch?"

"When you return, you'll find that almost no time has passed at all. I will inform Ginny and your team of where you've gone," said McGonagall. "We've thought this through, Harry."

"Alright then. How am I going back?" He asked Dumbledore.

"Ah, well you see, I happened to create another spell during my time; one that I adjusted specifically for you. After the year is over, you only need to say _'__Accipe me domi__' _three times and you will be returned back to this time."

"Are you ready?" Asked McGonagall.

"Wait! What about my things?"

"Ah, yes. I nearly forgot. While you and Ginny were out yesterday, I took the liberty of packing a bag for you." She handed him his old knapsack. He eyed it sceptically. "Undetectable extension charm," she said. "I would've thought you'd recognize it. Inside you'll find a bottled memory. That's the spell you'll need to cast on the school before you tell anyone who you really are." He nodded.

"Alright. I guess I'm ready to go now."

McGonagall began to chant, "_Duis quis turpis in est tempus viginti et duos annos Hogwarts_." A light enveloped Harry and he began to glow. Before he disappeared, you could barely here him mutter.

"Ginny's going to kill me."

And then he was gone.

McGonagall and Dumbledore exchanged a glance. "I hope this works, Albus." She moved to put away the _Registry _that still sat on her desk and gasped. "My God, Albus. I swear, that boy's going to be the death of me. He's barely arrived and he's already changed the future. Look!" She picked up the book to show him. There, directly underneath Harry's picture, was a smiling red haired girl and the words _Ginevra Weasley Potter, Defence Against the Dark Arts: 1977-1978._


	2. Welcome to Hogwarts

A/N: Hey guys! Thanks for the nice reviews. I'm glad you're liking my story! I hope you like this chapter.

...

Professor Albus Dumbledore always prided himself on never letting people know that he was surprised, but when a young man appeared suddenly in his office, enveloped in light and looking exactly like James Potter, for once the shock showed on his face. The man before him was average height, with messy black hair and glasses. The only big differences between him and James were his bright green eyes and a curiously shaped lightning bolt scar on his forehead. Before he could ask him who he was, the man spoke.

"Hello, Professor. I'm sure you're wondering who I am. Before I tell you, may I borrow your pensieve?" Albus was shocked. He didn't even know the man's name; and yet he was asking to borrow his pensieve. Nevertheless, he didn't look like a death eater, so he took the pensieve from its cabinet and set it on his desk. The man pulled a bottle full of swirling memories from his bag and poured the contents into the pensieve. "I assure you that this will only take a moment," he said before touching the pensieve's surface and disappearing.

As he had said, he was only gone for a moment. When he emerged, he pulled his wand from his pocket and murmured a spell. "Custodi arcana futuri. Custodi me ab externo secreta." The walls of Hogwarts glowed red for a moment. Then Harry looked at Dumbledore and said, "My name is Harry James Potter. I am 20 years old and I was born on July 31, 1980. My parents are James Potter and Lily Evans. They were murdered by Voldemort when I was one. Voldemort gave me this scar when I survived his killing curse. Where I come from it's the year 2000."

Albus was speechless. He couldn't believe what he'd heard. "How do I know you're telling the truth?" He asked.

"I'll show you," said Harry, gesturing towards the pensieve. He brought his wand to his temple and placed a few silvery strands in it. They both dove into the memories.

_"Potter, Harry!" As Harry stepped forward, whispers suddenly broke out like little hissing fires all over the hall._

_"Potter, did she say. The Harry Potter." The last thing Harry saw before the hat dropped over his eyes was the hall full of people craning to get a good look at him. The next second he was looking at the black inside of the hat. He waited._

_Hmm," said a small voice in his ear. "Difficult. Very difficult. Plenty of courage, I see. Not a bad mind either. There's talent, my goodness, yes - and a nice thirst to prove yourself, now that's interesting... So where shall I put you?" _

_Harry gripped the edges of the stool and thought, "Not Slytherin, not Slytherin."_

_"Not Slytherin, eh?" Said the small voice. "Are you sure? You could be great, you know. It's all here in your head, and Slytherin will help you on the way to greatness, no doubt about that - no. Well, if you're sure - better be GRYFFINDOR!"_

The memory dissolved and another one formed.

_It looked like an unused classroom. The dark shapes of desks and chairs were piled against the walls, and there was an upturned wastepaper basket - but propped against the wall facing him was something that didn't look as if it belonged there, something that looked as if someone had just put it there to keep it out of the way._

_It was a magnificent mirror, as high as the ceiling, with an ornate gold frame, standing on two clawed feet. There was an inscription carved around the top: "Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi." His panic fading now that there was no sound of Filch and Snape, Harry moved nearer to the mirror, wanting to look at himself but see no reflection again. He stepped in front of it._

_He had to clap his hands to his mouth to stop himself from screaming. He whirled around. His heart was pounding far more furiously than when the book had screamed - for he had seen not only himself in the mirror, but a whole crowd of people standing right behind him._

_But the room was empty. Breathing very fast, he turned slowly back to the mirror._

_There he was, reflected in it, white and scared-looking, and there, reflected behind him, were at least ten others. Harry looked over his shoulder - but still, no one was there. Or were they all invisible, too. Was he in fact in a room full of invisible people and this mirror's trick was that it reflected them, invisible or not?_

_He looked in the mirror again. A woman standing right behind his reflection was smiling at him and waving. He reached out a hand and felt the air behind him. If she was really there, he'd touch her, their reflections were so close together, but he felt only air - she and the others existed only in the mirror._

_She was a very pretty woman. She had dark red hair and her eyes - her eyes are just like mine, Harry thought, edging a little closer to the glass. Bright green - exactly the same shape, but then he noticed that she was crying; smiling, but crying at the same time. The tall, thin, black-haired man standing next to her put his arm around her. He wore glasses, and his hair was very untidy. It stuck up at the back, just as Harry's did._

_Harry was so close to the mirror now that his nose was nearly touching that of his reflection._

_"Mom." he whispered. "Dad." They just looked at him, smiling. And slowly, Harry looked into the faces of the other people in the mirror, and saw other pairs of green eyes like his, other noses like his, even a little old man who looked as though he had Harry's knobbly knees - Harry was looking at his family, for the first time in his life._

Then they were in the Chamber of Secrets.

_"Imagine how angry I was when the next time my diary was opened, it was Ginny who was writing to me, not you. She saw you with the diary, you see, and panicked. What if you found out how to work it, and I repeated all her secrets to you. What if, even worse, I told you who'd been strangling roosters. So the foolish little brat waited until your dormitory was deserted and stole it back. But I knew what I must do. It was clear to me that you were on the trail of Slytherin's heir. From everything Ginny had told me about you, I knew you would go to any lengths to solve the mystery -particularly if one of your best friends was attacked. And Ginny had told me the whole school was buzzing because you could speak Parseltongue. So I made Ginny write her own farewell on the wall and come down here to wait. She struggled and cried and became very boring. But there isn't much life left in her... She put too much into the diary, into me. Enough to let me leave its pages at last. I have been waiting for you to appear since we arrived here. I knew you'd come. I have many questions for you, Harry Potter." _

_"Like what?" Harry spat, fists still clenched._

_"Well," said Riddle, smiling pleasantly, "how is it that you - a skinny boy with no extraordinary magical talent - managed to defeat the greatest wizard of all time? How did you escape with nothing but a scar, while Lord Voldemort's powers were destroyed?" There was an odd red gleam in his hungry eyes now._

_"Why do you care how I escaped?" said Harry slowly. "Voldemort was after your time."_

_"Voldemort," said Riddle softly, "is my past, present, and future, Harry Potter." He pulled Harry's wand from his pocket and began to trace it through the air, writing three shimmering words: TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE. Then he waved the wand once, and the letters of his name rearranged themselves: I AM LORD VOLDEMORT. "You see," he whispered. "It was a name I was already using at Hogwarts, to my most intimate friends only, of course. You think I was going to use my filthy Muggle father's name forever? I, in whose veins run the blood of Salazar Slytherin himself, through my mother's side? I, keep the name of a foul, common Muggle, who abandoned me even before I was born, just because he found out his wife was a witch? No, Harry - I fashioned myself a new name, a name I knew wizards everywhere would one day fear to speak, when I had become the greatest sorcerer in the world!" Harry's brain seemed to have jammed. He stared numbly at Riddle, at the orphaned boy who had grown up to murder Harry's own parents, and so many others. At last he forced himself to speak._

_"You're not," he said, his quiet voice full of hatred._

_"Not what?" snapped Riddle._

_"Not the greatest sorcerer in the world," said Harry, breathing fast. "Sorry to disappoint you and all that, but the greatest wizard in the world is Albus Dumbledore. Everyone says so. Even when you were strong, you didn't dare try and take over at Hogwarts. Dumbledore saw through you when you were at school and he still frightens you now, wherever you're hiding these days." _

And then there was one more memory, of Harry when he was much older.

_A red-glow burst suddenly across the enchanted sky above them as an edge of dazzling sun appeared over the sill of the nearest window. The light hit both of their faces at the same time, so that Voldemort's was suddenly a flaming blur. Harry heard the high voice shriek as he too yelled his best hope to the heavens, pointing Draco's wand: "Avada Kedavra!"_

"_Expelliarmus!"_

_The bang was like a cannon blast, and the golden flames that erupted between them, at the dead center of the circle they had been treading, marked the point where the spells collided. Harry saw Voldemort's green jet meet his own spell, saw the Elder Wand fly high, dark against the sunrise, spinning across the enchanted ceiling like the head of Nagini, spinning through the air toward the master it would not kill, who had come to take full possession of it at last. And Harry, with the unerring skill of the Seeker, caught the wand in his free hand as Voldemort fell backward, arms splayed, the slit pupils of the scarlet eyes rolling upward. Tom Riddle hit the floor with a mundane finality, his body feeble and shrunken, the white hands empty, the snakelike face vacant and unknowing. Voldemort was dead, killed by his own rebounding curse, and Harry stood with two wands in his hand, staring down at his enemy's shell._

They landed back in Dumbledore's office. "So, you believe me now?" Dumbledore nodded. "I'd like to take the Defence job, if that's alright."

"Well," said Albus, "Based on what you just showed me, you're very qualified for the position, and I'm afraid I haven't been able to find someone willing to teach Defence. I was beginning to worry that we wouldn't have a teacher. You're hired. I'm assuming you don't have anywhere to stay, so you may stay at the castle. I'll show you to your quarters." As they moved to leave the office, Albus turned to look at him and smiled, his eyes twinkling, and said, "Oh, and Mr. Potter? Welcome to Hogwarts."


	3. Bloody Hell!

A/N: Sorry it took me this long to get these up. I forgot I was going to be away all day, so I'm just getting to this now. Hope you like my new chapter!

…

The weeks passed quickly for Harry, who was so busy preparing for his classes that he hardly left his office. He had expanded his classroom so that they could have more room, and added a duelling stage at the front. He was becoming increasingly nervous as the days passed by, knowing that he would soon meet his parents. He was also worried about his classes. He knew he was young, and after being starved by the Dursley's for so many years, he looked even younger. He hoped that the 6th and 7th years would respect him, even though he was only a few years older than them.

He spent his mornings trying to remember which things he was taught in which year. In the afternoons, he carefully disguised himself and went out to buy supplies. He obtained a few creatures from Hagrid, who was known for raising strange animals, and contacted an old colleague of Dumbledore's trying to get his hands on a boggart. The days flew by, and before he knew it the first of September had arrived.

He sat nervously at the Head table, watching the students entering the Great Hall. Several did double takes when they saw him. He guessed that they were all a bit confused, wondering who he was and why he looked so much like James. The Hall was mostly full now, and he still hadn't seen the Marauders or Lily enter. Just when he was beginning to worry, he saw them come in and take a seat near the end of Gryffindor table. Lily seemed to be yelling at James for something, and none of them noticed him until Sirius looked up and saw him and quickly nudged the rest of them. Soon he had five curious stares aimed at him. He quickly started up a conversation with Slughorn, who was sitting next to him.

All through the feast, he saw them whispering and sneaking looks at him. He saw many of the other students doing the same. He knew it was just a matter of time before Dumbledore introduced him, and then there would be even more stares. As if he knew what Harry was thinking, Dumbledore stood up and walked to the podium. As if on cue, all of the talking in the Hall stopped, every student at attention, waiting for his speech.

"Good evening, everyone. And welcome to a new year at Hogwarts. I have the usual start-of-term notices that I would like to share with you. First years must know that the Forbidden Forest is out-of-bounds to students, hence its name. Our caretaker, Mr. Filch, has asked me to remind you that magic is not permitted in the corridors between classes, nor are a number of other things, all of which can be checked on the extensive list now fastened to Mr. Filch's office door.

"Now, as I am sure you have all noticed, we have a new teacher with us. He will be taking over the Defence Against the Dark Arts position and I assure you, you are in for a truly unique experience. You see, I don't believe that there is a more qualified person to teach you this subject. Our new teacher has faced things that you could never even imagine, and has lived through horrors in his short life that have taken the lives of much older and wiser wizards. If he teaches you half of what he knows, then in one year, you will be more prepared to fight the dark forces that are around us than you would be after seven years of magical study.

"You are looking at the only person to ever survive the killing curse." He paused, letting it sink in. "Twice." The Great Hall was silent. People gasped in shock. No one had ever survived the killing curse once, let alone twice. Harry watched Dumbledore open his mouth again. In an instant, all was quiet again.

"Let me explain. Our new professor isn't just your average wizard. In fact, he isn't even born yet." He paused again. "In case you don't know what I'm talking about, I'll say it again. Your teacher isn't from this time. He's from the future." Harry stood up, for he knew what was coming next. "Allow me to formally introduce you to your new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, Professor—"

BOOM!

"Harry James Potter!"

Everyone twisted around to look at the entrance to the Great Hall. There, standing in the doorway, was an angry red-head. Everyone was silent. All that could be heard was Harry Potter muttering, "Bloody hell!"


	4. A Weasley, I Presume?

A/N: Okay, so I've revised this story, adding a few things, but it's not that major, so if you don't want to read it again that's fine. I really only changed the last few paragraphs.

crazymacky – I'm sorry my chapters aren't that long; It seems a lot longer in Microsoft Word. I'll do my best to make them longer from now on.

…

James Potter had spent most of the train ride to Hogwarts trying to persuade Lily Evans to go out with him. He had already asked her to the first Hogmeade trip 17 times, and she had refused each time. As they were leaving the train, he spotted her with her friends and decided that the 18th time's the charm. He grabbed her arm and pulled her off to the side. She looked angry.

"Lovely Lily, would you please go to Hogsmeade with me?" He asked before she raised her hand and slapped him across the face. He backed away. "Ow! What was that for?" She glared at him.

"For the last time, no, I will not go to Hogsmeade with you! Get it through your thick scull! I hate you! Stop asking me out!"

"Hate is a strong word, love."

"Well, it's not strong enough. And stop calling me love!"

She stomped over to where the other Marauders were waiting with a carriage. Then she looked back at him. "Hurry up, Potter. We're going to be late to the feast."

He jogged over and climbed in the carriage just as it started to move. Lily had conveniently sat between Remus and Sirius so that he couldn't sit by her. She glared at him the whole ride. When they got to the castle, she was the first one out. James scrambled out after her, yelling, "C'mon, Lily! Give me a chance!"

"I've given you a thousand chances, Potter, and you've blown every one of them." They were walking quickly now, the rest of the Marauders nearly running to keep up. "You're arrogant and mean, and I wouldn't go out with you if it was a choice between you and the giant squid." They had finally reached to Great Hall, and Lily looked annoyed to find that it was full. James watched her sit at the end of the table and quickly rushed over to take the seat next to her.

"Can't you just leave me alone, Potter?"

"Nope."

Suddenly Sirius nudged him.

"Look at the new professor, Prongs. He looks just like you!"

He looked up at the Head table and saw a young man talking to Professor Slughorn. He looked almost exactly like him. They had the same messy black hair, long nose and thin face. They even had the same style of glasses! As the sorting started, he found himself staring at the new professor, wondering who he was.

"I didn't think you had any cousins, Prongs," said Sirius.

"I don't."

"Then who is that guy?" asked Peter.

"I have no idea."

Then food magically appeared on the table, and the group was temporarily distracted. Their talk turned to the summer holidays. Sirius had, of course, spent most of the summer with the Potters, but Remus hadn't seen them for two weeks, and Peter had been visiting relatives in America and hadn't seen them at all.

"How was your summer, Lily?" James asked, just as the food disappeared and Dumbledore stood up. She shushed him.

"Good evening, everyone, and welcome to a new year at Hogwarts. I have the usual start-of-term notices that I would like to share with you. First years must know that the Forbidden Forest is out-of-bounds…" James tuned him out and brought his attention back to the mysterious new teacher. He looked too much like him to not be a relative, but his parents never told him that he had a cousin. He started listening to Dumbledore again once he started talking about the new professor.

"Now, as I am sure you have all noticed, we have a new teacher with us. He will be taking over the Defence Against the Dark Arts position and I assure you, you are in for a truly unique experience. You see, I don't believe that there is a more qualified person to teach you this subject. Our new teacher has faced things that you could never even imagine, and has lived through horrors in his short life that have taken the lives of much older and wiser wizards. If he teaches you half of what he knows, then in one year, you will be more prepared to fight the dark forces that are around us than you would be after seven years of magical study.

"You are looking at the only person to ever survive the killing curse." He paused for a moment and then continued. "Twice." The Great Hall was silent except for the sound of people gasping in shock. No one had ever survived the killing curse once, let alone twice. It was impossible to block. Whispers broke out among the students. He looked at Sirius and saw him with his mouth wide open, stunned.

"Do you think it's true?" he asked. Then Dumbledore opened his mouth again. In an instant, all was quiet.

"Let me explain. Our new professor isn't just your average wizard. In fact, he isn't even born yet." He paused again. "In case you don't know what I'm talking about, I'll say it again. Your teacher isn't from this time. He's from the future." James couldn't believe it. How was it possible? He looked at the other Marauders. They were all surprised too.

"Hey, James, maybe he's your kid. He looks just like you," said Remus. James contemplated that. It was a good possibility seeing as they could pass for twins, but who was his mum? He turned back to Dumbledore, who was officially introducing the new professor.

"Allow me to formally introduce you to your new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, Professor—"

BOOM!

"Harry James Potter!"

Everyone twisted around to look at the entrance to the Great Hall. There, standing in the doorway, was an angry red-head. Everyone was silent. You could have heard a pin drop. As the whole school looked at the new person, all that could be heard was the new professor muttering, "Bloody hell!"

James didn't blame him. The girl looked scary. She was short and petite, but she had a nice figure. Her hair was a flaming red that rivalled even Lily's, and she had a hard, blazing look in her eyes. She was, overall, very attractive, and James probably would have been attracted to her if he hadn't been so in love with Lily. It seemed that he was one of the few boys that weren't ogling her.

Lightning fast, she drew her wand and cast two spells in quick succession with amazing speed and accuracy. She then marched up the aisle to the head table where she surveyed her handiwork. As she did, James saw several teenage boys checking her out, which she didn't seem to notice. She was focused on the professor.

Professor Potter was in a full body-bind, sitting in his chair with giant bat-shaped bogies flapping around his face. He had a look of genuine fear on his face, which caused James to wonder if she was a death eater. When he looked at Dumbledore though, he saw him smiling as if he quite enjoyed the professor's plight. He wondered if the girl was some crazy ex-girlfriend that wanted to make him pay. Then he remembered what Dumbledore had been saying before she showed up. Professor Potter was from the future. Did that mean that she was too?

He broke out of his thoughts when the mystery girl started to speak.

"HARRY JAMES POTTER! HOW DARE YOU DO THAT TO ME! WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO SAY FOR YOURSELF, HMM? ANYTHING?" She paused. "THAT'S WHAT I THOUGHT! HOW COULD YOU JUST GO BACK IN TIME WITHOUT EVEN TELLING ME? YOU JUST LEAVE IT TO MCGONAGALL TO TELL ME! DID YOU THINK I WOULDN'T NOTICE? AFTER ALL WE'VE BEEN THROUGH, I THOUGHT WE FINALLY HAD SOME PEACE, AND THEN I FIND OUT YOU'RE GONE! WHAT IF SOME WANNA-BE VOLDEMORT HAD KIDNAPPED AND KILLED YOU! UGGH!" She waved her wand and the professor unfroze. He batted at the bats still flapping around his face, and then without even reaching for his wand, they disappeared.

"Jesus, Ginny! It's not my fault! Dumbledore practically forced me to come! McGonagall sent me a letter in the middle of the night that turned into a _portkey_ as soon as I touched it. I had no say in the matter. I wanted to tell you. Honestly, I did. Do you think I would just leave like that if I had a choice?" She just sighed.

"Well, this certainly has been an eventful night," said Dumbledore. He looked at Ginny. "A Weasley, I presume?"

"Not anymore," she said quietly.

"Professor, this is my wife. She'll be helping me teach if that's alright." Dumbledore nodded before turning to the students. "Nothing to see here. Off to bed. Pip! Pip!"

James was surprised. The two of them seemed too young to be married. Then again, they seemed too young to be professors, but they were. As he drifted off to sleep that night, he couldn't help but wonder what the two people had gone through to be qualified to teach Defense at such a young age. He couldn't wait to find out.


	5. Pop Quiz

A/N: Sorry it took me so long to get this on. I meant to finish it yesterday, but I ran out of time. I know that this is a long chapter, but I hope you like it!

...

Harry was nervous for his first class. After the feast the night before, he had filled Ginny in on everything that was happening in this time, as well as his lesson plan for the year. She had spent a few hours adding things to his notes, as well as brushing up on some of the spells that they were to teach.

The first class of the day was a double period with the 7th year NEWT class. Harry was especially nervous to be teaching his parents, knowing that James had probably figured out that Harry was his son and would be asking questions that he didn't want to answer. He knew he would have to tell both of them sometime. It was part of what made him who he was, and he knew that if he told the students stories about his life, someone would eventually realize that he had never mentioned any of his family.

He sat on his desk at the front of the classroom, while Ginny had disillusioned herself at the back, blending into the wall. They had a special surprise planned for the class. As the students entered the classroom, he noticed how few of them there were. There were 5 Gryffindors, 4 Ravenclaws, 2 Slytherins, and a lone Hufflepuff. The Marauders and Lily were of course the Gryffindors, and he recognized only Snape out of the rest of the students.

They all took seats, Lily of course sitting front and center with the girl from Hufflepuff. Harry smiled as he realized how similar she was to Hermione. His eyes drifted to the Marauders. James and Sirius sat together, whispering over a piece of parchment. James looked so much like him. Now he knew why every always compared him to his dad. Sirius looked a lot younger, and more carefree than Harry had ever seen him. Remus, he noticed, had only one scar on his face, and looked far happier than he ever had. Harry couldn't even look at Peter. The class, aside from James and Sirius, were looking at him eagerly, waiting for him to start, so he said the one thing they never thought they'd here on the first day.

"Pop quiz."

On cue, Ginny threw a handful of mild hexes at different students around the room. She did it nonverbally and was still disillusioned, so the students had no idea where they were coming from. Most of the class took cover under the desks, trying to avoid being hit, but the Marauders, minus Peter, and Lily took out their wands and conjured shields, while trying to find the source of the spells. Sirius had the bright idea of conjuring paint and throwing it at the wall. Soon you could see Ginny's outline moving. Ginny, knowing that she was now visible quickly stunned the four of them before cancelling the disillusioning charm and striding up to the front of the classroom. While Harry enervated the stunned students, she began lecturing the ones who had hidden.

"You're all cowards," she barked, looking around at the nervous students. "If that had been a real battle, you would all be dead. Don't think that the death eaters aren't going to kill you just because you were hiding under a table, terrified. They don't show mercy. They kill without a second thought. It is our job to teach you how to fight back; how to survive. So don't take this class lightly."

By the time she finished, James, Sirius, Remus, and Lily were awake. Ginny turned to them.

"Congratulations on being the only ones brave enough to fight."

"Ginny, don't be harsh." To the rest of the class, he said, "Now, after that exciting start to the day, we're going to tone it down a notch. We're going to be doing something that none of my teachers ever did. We're going to allow you to ask us about ourselves, anything at all; although there are a few questions we may not answer. Who wants to go first? Sirius?"

"Who are your parents?"

"Ah. I thought you might ask that, although I'm surprised that you haven't figured it out yet."

"We all know you're James' kid, but who's your mum?" asked Sirius. Harry just shrugged, smiling slightly.

"Guess."

Remus and Lily were the first to figure it out. Lily started banging her head on her desk and moaning, "No, no, no, no, no!" Remus whispered something in James' ear, who jumped up and started doing a little victory dance while yelling, "I marry Lily! I marry Lily!" Snape looked like he was going to puke, and the rest of the class all seemed surprised.

"Settle down, settle down," said Harry, laughing. James reluctantly sat back down at his desk, while Lily had yet to show her face. Harry saw Remus raise his hand.

"So who are you?" he asked Ginny.

"A Weasley," she said proudly. James looked surprised at this.

"But there hasn't been a female Weasley in—"

"Seven generations. I know. I'm the seventh child, too, and everyone knows that seven is the most powerful magical number," she said thoughtfully.

"I have a question," said Snape with a sneer on his face. "How old are you?"

"I'm 20 and Ginny is 19, but that's—"

"And you think you're qualified to teach us? We're supposed to be preparing for our NEWTs!" said the other Slytherin.

"I think," Said Harry, quietly, "that you'll find us very qualified." He looked around the room. In a louder voice, he said, "Raise your hand if you have survived the killing curse when you were a year old." He raised his hand. "And how many of _you _faced Voldemort when you were 11 and lived?" Harry and Ginny both raised their hands while everyone else flinched at Voldemort's name.

"How many of _you_," asked Ginny, "have been possessed by Voldemort?" They both kept their hands up. "And fought it off?" she continued. Harry put his hand down, embarrassed. "How many of _you_ killed a basilisk with a sword when you were only 12? How many of _you _learned how to produce a corporeal patronus when you were 13? How many of _you _havefought a dragon?" Ginny was started to get worked up. "How many of _you _were taught by death eaters who tortured you for not practising the Unforgivables. How many of _you _watched someone you loved _die _when they were so full of live, and way before their time?" With this she started crying, and ran out of the classroom. The class was stunned.

"Did all of that really happen to you?" asked James. Harry nodded sadly.

Then a quiet voice asked, "Who did she see die?" Harry turned to Lily before answering.

"Her brother. Fred. He was the funniest guy I've ever known. You couldn't find a nicer person. All he ever wanted to do was make people laugh. Ginny's whole family fought in the battle. They were all amazing wizards. Her eldest brother, Bill, is a curse breaker, Charlie works with dragons in Romania, Percy is high up at the ministry, the twins, Fred and George, opened up their own joke shop, and Ron was my best mate at Hogwarts. He was by my side through everything, and played an important part in the war. When Fred died, the whole family suffered. After George, Ginny was the most heartbroken. She watched him die; saw the killing curse hit him, and knew that there was nothing they could do. She cried for weeks. Her only comfort is that Fred died with a smile on his face." He sighed heavily.

"The war took a toll on everyone. A lot of good people died for the cause. I lost a lot of friends." He paused. "Anyways, let's stop talking about the war. Does anyone else have any other questions?" The Hufflepuff girl raised her hand. "Yes, Miss. Walters?"

"Can you really do a patronus charm?" In answer, Harry brought out his wand and thought of him and Ginny on their wedding day.

"_Expecto patronum._" A silvery stag burst from the end of his wand and galloped around the room once before vanishing. Harry saw the Marauders exchange looks, knowing that his patronus is Prongs. "You can also use them to send messages," he continued. He said the incantation again, but this time he spoke to the stag. "Message for Ginny Potter. Are you alright?" The stag ran off through the wall. After a moment, a silvery horse appeared in the room. It spoke with Ginny's voice.

"I'll be fine. You know me." Harry sighed again, knowing that Ginny was not alright, but not wanting to leave the class unattended.

"Any other questions?" he asked.

"Do you play Quidditch, Professor?" James asked without raising his hand.

"First of all, no one is allowed to call me or Ginny 'Professor.' You're to call us by our first names only." Harry said. Then he laughed.

"What's so funny?" asked James, puzzled.

"Oh nothing, it's just—"

"Harry is the seeker for the Chudley Cannons, and I'm the youngest player in a century to be recruited by the Holyhead Harpies," said Ginny. She had entered the classroom silently, and everyone whipped around to look at her. Harry noticed that her eyes looked slightly puffy. "I had about 8 other offers, of course. I _am _the most wanted chaser on the circuit. Ron nearly had a fit when I didn't play for Chudley with him and Harry, but I've wanted to play for the Harpies for forever. Anyway, just about every team in the league went after Harry. Everyone wanted a piece of the Boy-Who-Lived, but Harry is so fiercely loyal that he went to the Cannons with Ron. Now they might actually have a chance at making the playoffs for the first time in about 50 years." James and Sirius had their mouths hanging open by the end of her speech. Sirius recovered first.

"Can we see you play?" he asked. Harry shared a knowing look with Ginny. She nodded and opened the door to their office.

"Now," said Harry, "you can't tell anyone we're doing this, seeing as it's not exactly Defence, but we'll let you see anyway." Ginny had come back with the pensieve. She set it on the desk. "Does anyone know what this is?" Lily's hand shot into the air.

"It's a pensieve, Harry. It's an object used to review memories. It has the appearance of a shallow stone basin, into which are carved runes. It is filled with collected memories, which a person can then watch from a third-person point of view."

"Excellent, Lily. Twenty points to Gryffindor. Most adults would not even know what this was. It's a very rare object. I was lucky enough to be able to borrow Professor Dumbledore's. Now, we both have a few Quidditch memories that we are adding to the pensieve. When a memory ends, it will fade to form a new one." Harry and Ginny then brought their wands to their temples. The students watched them pull silvery strands of memory from their heads and place them in the pensieve. Then Harry gestured for them to all come up. "All you have to do is touch the liquid and you'll be sucked in. Ginny can go first." Ginny smiled as she touched the memories and then was gone. The students all looked nervous. Then James bravely touched the bowl. Before long, all of the students were inside and the memories began to play.

_At three-thirty that afternoon, Harry, Ron, and the other Gryffindors hurried down the front steps onto the grounds for their first flying lesson. It was a clear, breezy day, and the grass rippled under their feet as they marched down the sloping lawns toward a smooth, flat lawn on the opposite side of the grounds to the forbidden forest, whose trees were swaying darkly in the distance._

_The Slytherins were already there, and so were twenty broomsticks lying in neat lines on the ground. Harry had heard Fred and George Weasley complain about the school brooms, saying that some of them started to vibrate if you flew too high, or always flew slightly to the left._

_Their teacher, Madam Hooch, arrived. She had short, gray hair, and yellow eyes like a hawk._

_"Well, what are you all waiting for." she barked. "Everyone stand by a broomstick. Come on, hurry up." Harry glanced down at his broom. It was old and some of the twigs stuck out at odd angles._

_"Stick out your right hand over your broom," called Madam Hooch at the front, "and say 'Up!"' _

_"UP!" Everyone shouted._

_Harry's broom jumped into his hand at once, but it was one of the few that did. Hermione Granger's had simply rolled over on the ground, and Neville's hadn't moved at all. Perhaps brooms, like horses, could tell when you were afraid, thought Harry; there was a quaver in Neville's voice that said only too clearly that he wanted to keep his feet on the ground._

_Madam Hooch then showed them how to mount their brooms without sliding off the end, and walked up and down the rows correcting their grips._

_Harry and Ron were delighted when she told Malfoy he'd been doing it wrong for years._

_"Now, when I blow my whistle, you kick off from the ground, hard," said Madam Hooch. "Keep your brooms steady, rise a few feet, and then come straight back down by leaning forward slightly. On my whistle - three - two -" But Neville, nervous and jumpy and frightened of being left on the ground, pushed off hard before the whistle had touched Madam Hooch's lips._

_"Come back, boy!" she shouted, but Neville was rising straight up like a cork shot out of a bottle - twelve feet - twenty feet. Harry saw his scared white face look down at the ground falling away, saw him gasp, slip sideways off the broom and - WHAM - a thud and a nasty crack and Neville lay face down on the grass in a heap. His broomstick was still rising higher and higher, and started to drift lazily toward the forbidden forest and out of sight._

_Madam Hooch was bending over Neville, her face as white as his._

_"Broken wrist," Harry heard her mutter. "Come on, boy - it's all right,_ _up you get."_

_She turned to the rest of the class._

_"None of you is to move while I take this boy to the hospital wing! You leave those brooms where they are or you'll be out of Hogwarts before you can say 'Quidditch.' Come on, dear." Neville, his face tear-streaked, clutching his wrist, hobbled off with Madam Hooch, who had her arm around him._

_No sooner were they out of earshot than Malfoy burst into laughter._

_"Did you see his face, the great lump." The other Slytherins joined in._

_"Shut up, Malfoy," snapped Parvati Patil._

_"Ooh, sticking up for Longbottom." said Pansy Parkinson, a hard-faced Slytherin girl. "Never thought you'd like fat little crybabies, Parvati." "Look!" said Malfoy, darting forward and snatching something out of the grass. "It's that stupid thing Longbottom's gran sent him." The Remembrall glittered in the sun as he held it up._

_"Give that here, Malfoy," said Harry quietly. Everyone stopped talking to watch._

_Malfoy smiled nastily._

_"I think I'll leave it somewhere for Longbottom to find - how about - up a tree." _

_"Give it here!" Harry yelled, but Malfoy had leapt onto his broomstick and taken off. He hadn't been lying, he could fly well. Hovering level with the topmost branches of an oak he called, _

_"Come and get it, Potter!" Harry grabbed his broom._

_"No!" shouted Hermione Granger. "Madam Hooch told us not to move - you'll get us all into trouble." Harry ignored her. Blood was pounding in his ears. He mounted the broom and kicked hard against the ground and up, up he soared; air rushed through his hair, and his robes whipped out behind him -and in a rush of fierce joy he realized he'd found something he could do without being taught - this was easy, this was wonderful. He pulled his broomstick up a little to take it even higher and heard screams and gasps of girls back on the ground and an admiring whoop from Ron._

_He turned his broomstick sharply to face Malfoy in midair. Malfoy looked stunned._

_"Give it here," Harry called, "or I'll knock you off that broom!" _

_"Oh, yeah?" said Malfoy, trying to sneer, but looking worried._

_Harry knew, somehow, what to do. He leaned forward and grasped the broom tightly in both hands, and it shot toward Malfoy like a javelin. Malfoy only just got out of the way in time; Harry made a sharp about-face and held the broom steady. A few people below were clapping._

_"No Crabbe and Goyle up here to save your neck, Malfoy," Harry called._

_The same thought seemed to have struck Malfoy._

_"Catch it if you can, then!" he shouted, and he threw the glass ball high into the air and streaked back toward the ground._

_Harry saw, as though in slow motion, the ball rise up in the air and then start to fall. He leaned forward and pointed his broom handle down - next second he was gathering speed in a steep dive, racing the ball - wind whistled in his ears, mingled with the screams of people watching - he stretched out his hand - a foot from the ground he caught it, just in time to pull his broom straight, and he toppled gently onto the grass with the Remembrall clutched safely in his fist._

_"HARRY POTTER!" His heart sank faster than he'd just dived. Professor McGonagall was running toward them. He got to his feet, trembling._

_"Never - in all my time at Hogwarts -"_

The memory faded and was replaced by a new one.

_Harry heard a snort from behind him and turned around, still holding the Snitch tightly in his hand: Draco Malfoy had landed close by. White-faced with fury, he was still managing to sneer. _

"_Saved Weasley's neck, haven't you?" he said to Harry. "I've never seen a worse Keeper… but then he was born in a bin… did you like my lyrics, Potter?" _

_Harry didn't answer. He turned away to meet the rest of the team who were now landing one by one, yelling and punching the air in triumph; all except Ron, who had dismounted from his broom over by the goalposts and seemed to be making his way slowly back to the changing rooms alone. _

"_We wanted to write another couple of verses!" Malfoy called, as Katie and Alicia hugged Harry. "But we couldn't find rhymes for fat and ugly - we wanted to sing about his mother, see-" _

"_Talk about sour grapes," said Angelina, casting Malfoy a disgusted look. _

"_- We couldn't fit in useless loser either - for his father, you know -" _

_Fred and George had realized what Malfoy was talking about. Halfway through shaking Harry's hand, they stiffened, looking round at Malfoy. _

"_Leave it!" said Angelina at once, taking Fred by the arm. "Leave it, Fred; let him yell, he's just sore he lost, the jumped-up little -" _

"_- but you like the Weasley's, don't you, Potter?" said Malfoy, sneering. "Spend holidays there and everything, don't you? Can't see how you stand the stink, but I suppose when you've been dragged up by Muggles, even the Weasleys' hovel smells okay -" _

"Harry," said Lily, fearfully. "Harry, are we dead?" Harry smiled at her sadly.

"You really are the brightest witch of your age, Lily." She let out a strangled sob, and James went over to comfort her. "Wait! Does that mean…?" She trailed off.

"Yes, I was brought up by your sister and her husband." She let out another wail at this. The memory continued.

_Harry grabbed hold of George. Meanwhile, it was taking the combined efforts of Angelina, Alicia and Katie to stop Fred leaping on Malfoy, who was laughing openly. Harry looked around for Madam Hooch, but she was still berating Crabbe for his illegal bludger attack. _

"_Or perhaps," said Malfoy, leering as he backed away, "you can remember what your mother's house stank like, Potter, and Weasleys' pigsty reminds you of it —" _

_Harry was not aware of releasing George; all he knew was that a second later both of them were sprinting towards Malfoy. He had completely forgotten that all the teachers were watching: all he wanted to do was cause Malfoy as much pain as possible; with no time to draw out his wand, he merely drew back the fist clutching the Snitch and sank it as hard as he could into Malfoy's stomach - _

"_Harry! HARRY! GEORGE! NO" _

_He could hear girls' voices screaming, Malfoy yelling, George swearing, a whistle blowing and the bellowing of the crowd around him, but he did not care. Not until somebody in the vicinity yelled "Impedimenta!" and he was knocked over backwards by the force of the spell, did he abandon the attempt to punch every inch of Malfoy he could reach. _

"_What do you think you're doing?" screamed Madam Hooch, as Harry leapt to his feet. It seemed to have been her who had hit him with the Impediment Jinx; she was holding her whistle in one hand and a wand in the other; her broom lay abandoned several feet away. Malfoy was curled up on the ground, whimpering and moaning, his nose bloody; George was sporting a swollen lip; Fred was still being forcibly restrained by the three Chasers, and Crabbe was cackling in the background. "I've never seen behaviour like it - back up to the castle, both of you, and straight to your Head of House's office! Go! Now." _

_Harry and George turned on their heels and marched off the pitch, both panting, neither saying a word to the other. The howling and jeering of the crowd grew fainter and fainter until they reached the Entrance Hall, where they could hear nothing except the sound of their own footsteps. Harry became aware that something was still struggling in his right hand, the knuckles of which he had bruised against Malfoy's jaw. Looking down, he saw the Snitch's silver wings protruding from between his fingers, struggling for release. _

_They had barely reached the door of Professor McGonagall's office when she came marching along the corridor behind them. She was wearing a Gryffindor scarf, but tore it from her throat with shaking hands as she strode towards them, looking livid. _

"_In!" she said furiously, pointing to the door. Harry and George entered. She strode around behind her desk and faced them, quivering with rage as she threw the Gryffindor scarf aside on to the floor. _

"_Well?" she said. "I have never seen such a disgraceful exhibition. Two on one! Explain yourselves!" _

"_Malfoy provoked us," said Harry stiffly. _

"_Provoked you?" shouted Professor McGonagall, slamming a fist on to her desk so that her tartan tin slid sideways off it and burst open, littering the floor with Ginger Newts. "He'd just lost, hadn't he? Of course he wanted to provoke you! But what on earth he can have said that justified what you two —" _

"_He insulted my parents," snarled George. "And Harry's mother."_

"_But instead of leaving it to Madam Hooch to sort out, you two decided to give an exhibition of Muggle duelling, did you?" bellowed Professor McGonagall. "Have you any idea what you've - ?" _

"_Hem, hem." _

_Harry and George both wheeled round. Dolores Umbridge was standing in the doorway wrapped in a green tweed cloak that greatly enhanced her resemblance to a giant toad, and was smiling in the horrible, sickly, ominous way that Harry had come to associate with imminent misery. _

"_May I help, Professor McGonagall?" asked Professor Umbridge in her most poisonously sweet voice._

_Blood rushed into Professor McGonagall's face. _

"_Help?" she repeated, in a constricted voice. "What do you mean, help?" _

_Professor Umbridge moved forwards into the office, still smiling her sickly smile. _

"_Why, I thought you might be grateful for a little extra authority." _

_Harry would not have been surprised to see sparks fly from Professor McGonagall's nostrils. _

"_You thought wrong," she said, turning her back on Umbridge. "Now, you two had better listen closely. I do not care what provocation Malfoy offered you, I do not care if he insulted every family member you possess, your behaviour was disgusting and I am giving each of you a week's worth of detentions! Do not look at me like that, Potter, you deserve it! And if either of you ever -" _

"_Hem, hem." Professor McGonagall closed her eyes as though praying for patience as she turned her face towards Professor Umbridge again. _

"_Yes?" _

"_I think they deserve rather more than detentions," said Umbridge, smiling still more broadly. Professor McGonagall's eyes flew open. _

"_But unfortunately" she said, with an attempt at a reciprocal smile that made her look as though she had lockjaw, "it is what I think that counts, as they are in my House, Dolores." _

"_Well, actually, Minerva," simpered Professor Umbridge, "I think you'll find that what I think does count. Now, where is it? Cornelius just sent it… I mean," she gave a false little laugh as she rummaged in her handbag, "the Minister just sent it… ah yes…" She had pulled out a piece of parchment which she now unfurled, clearing her throat fussily before starting to read what it said._

"_Hem, hem… 'Educational Decree Number Twenty-five'." _

"_Not another one!" exclaimed Professor McGonagall violently. _

"_Well, yes," said Umbridge, still smiling. "As a matter of fact, Minerva, it was you who made me see that we needed a further amendment… you remember how you overrode me, when I was unwilling to allow the Gryffindor Quidditch team to re-form? How you took the case to Dumbledore, who insisted that the team be allowed to play? Well, now, I couldn't have that. I contacted the Minister at once, and he quite agreed with me that the High Inquisitor has to have the power to strip pupils of privileges, or she - that is to say, I - would have less authority than common teachers! And you see now, don't you, Minerva, how right I was in attempting to stop the Gryffindor team re-forming? Dreadful tempers… anyway, I was reading out our amendment… hem, hem… 'High Inquisitor will henceforth have supreme authority over all punishments, sanctions and removal of privileges pertaining to the students of Hogwarts, and the power to alter such punishments, sanctions and removals of privileges as may have been ordered by other staff members. Signed, Cornelius Fudge, Minister for Magic, Order of Merlin First Class, etc., etc.'" _

_She rolled up the parchment and put it back into her handbag, still smiling. _

"_So… I really think I will have to ban these two from playing Quidditch ever again," she said, looking from Harry to George and back again. _

_Harry felt the Snitch fluttering madly in his hand. _

"_Ban us?" he said, and his voice sounded strangely distant. "From playing… ever again?" _

"_Yes, Mr. Potter, I think a lifelong ban ought to do the trick," said Umbridge, her smile widening still further as she watched him struggle to comprehend what she had said. "You and Mr. Weasley here. And I think, to be safe, this young man's twin ought to be stopped, too - if his teammates had not restrained him, I feel sure he would have attacked young Mr. Malfoy as well. I will want their broomsticks confiscated, of course; I shall keep them safely in my office, to make sure there is no infringement of my ban. But I am not unreasonable, Professor McGonagall," she continued, turning back to Professor McGonagall who was now standing as still as though carved from ice, staring at her. "The rest of the team can continue playing; I saw no signs of violence from any of them. Well… good afternoon to you."_

Harry could see that James and Lily were furious about this. The next memory formed.

"_Ron and Ginny not here?" asked Fred, looking around as he pulled up a chair, and when Harry shook his head, he said, "Good. We were watching their practice. They're going to be slaughtered. They're complete rubbish without us." _

"_Come on, Ginny's not bad," said George fairly, sitting down next to Fred. "Actually, I dunno how she got so good, seeing how we never let her play with us." _

"_She's been breaking into your broom shed in the garden since the age of six and taking each of your brooms out in turn when you weren't looking," said Hermione from behind her tottering pile of Ancient Rune books. _

"_Oh," said George, looking mildly impressed. "Well - that'd explain it." _

"_Has Ron saved a goal yet?" asked Hermione, peering over the top of Magical Hieroglyphs and Logograms. _

"_Well, he can do it if he doesn't think anyone's watching him," said Fred, rolling his eyes. "So all we have to do is ask the crowd to turn their backs and talk among themselves every time the Quaffle goes up his end on Saturday." _

Some of the class laughed at this scene, and Sirius looked over at Ginny, impressed. Another scene started up.

_They walked out onto the pitch to tumultuous roars and boos. One end of the stadium was solid red and gold; the other, a sea of green and silver. Many Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws had taken sides too: Amidst all the yelling and clapping Harry could distinctly hear the roar of Luna Lovegood's famous lion-topped hat. _

_Harry stepped up to Madam Hooch, the referee, who was standing ready to release the balls from the crate. _

"_Captains shake hands," she said, and Harry had his hand crushed by the new Slytherin Captain, Urquhart. "Mount your brooms. On the whistle… three… two… one…" _

_The whistle sounded, Harry and the others kicked off hard from the frozen ground, and they were away. Harry soared around the perimeter of the grounds, looking around for the Snitch and keeping one eye on Harper, who was zigzagging far below him. Then a voice that was jarringly different to the usual commentator's started up. _

"_Well, there they go, and I think we're all surprised to see the team that Potter's put together this year. Many thought, given Ronald Weasley's patchy performance as Keeper last year, that he might be off the team, but of course, a close personal friendship with the Captain does help…" _

_These words were greeted with jeers and applause from the Slytherin end of the pitch. Harry craned around on his broom to look toward the commentator's podium. A tall, skinny blond boy with an upturned nose was standing there, talking into the magical megaphone that had once been Lee Jordan's; Harry recognized Zacharias Smith, a Hufflepuff player whom he heartily disliked. _

"_Oh, and here comes Slytherin's first attempt on goal, its Urquhart streaking down the pitch and —" _

_Harry's stomach turned over._

"— _Weasley saves it, well, he's bound to get lucky sometimes, I suppose…" _

"_That's right, Smith, he is," muttered Harry, grinning to himself, as he dived amongst the Chasers with his eyes searching all around for some hint of the elusive Snitch. _

_With half an hour of the game gone, Gryffindor were leading sixty points to zero, Ron having made some truly spectacular saves, some by the very tips of his gloves, and Ginny having scored four of Gryffindor's six goals. This effectively stopped Zacharias wondering loudly whether the two Weasley's were only there because Harry liked them, and he started on Peakes and Coote instead. _

"_Of course, Coote isn't really the usual build for a Beater," said Zacharias loftily, "they've generally got a bit more muscle —" _

"_Hit a Bludger at him!" Harry called to Coote as he zoomed past, but Coote, grinning broadly, chose to aim the next Bludger at Harper instead, who was just passing Harry in the opposite direction. Harry was pleased to hear the dull thunk that meant the Bludger had found its mark. _

_It seemed as though Gryffindor could do no wrong. Again and again they scored, and again and again, at the other end of the pitch, Ron saved goals with apparent ease. He was actually smiling now, and when the crowd greeted a particularly good save with a rousing chorus of the old favourite "Weasley Is Our King," he pretended to conduct them from on high. _

"_Thinks he's something special today, doesn't he?" said a snide voice, and Harry was nearly knocked off his broom as Harper collided with him hard and deliberately. "Your blood-traitor pal…" _

_Madam Hooch's back was turned, and though Gryffindors below shouted in anger, by the time she looked around, Harper had already sped off. His shoulder aching, Harry raced after him, determined to ram him back… _

"_And I think Harper of Slytherin's seen the Snitch!" said Zacharias Smith through his megaphone. "Yes, he's certainly seen something Potter hasn't!"_

_Smith really was an idiot, thought Harry, hadn't he noticed them collide? But next moment, his stomach seemed to drop out of the, sky — Smith was right and Harry was wrong: Harper had not sped upward at random; he had spotted what Harry had not: The Snitch was speeding along high above them, glinting brightly against the clear blue sky. _

_Harry accelerated; the wind was whistling in his ears so that it drowned all sound of Smith's commentary or the crowd, but Harper was still ahead of him, and Gryffindor was only a hundred points up; if Harper got there first Gryffindor had lost… and now Harper was feet from it, his hand outstretched… _

"_Oy, Harper!" yelled Harry in desperation. "How much did Malfoy pay you to come on instead of him?" _

_He did not know what made him say it, but Harper did a double-take; he fumbled the Snitch, let it slip through his fingers, and shot right past it. Harry made a great swipe for the tiny, fluttering ball and caught it. _

"_YES!" Harry yelled. Wheeling around, he hurtled back toward the ground, the Snitch held high in his hand. As the crowd realized what had happened, a great shout went up that almost drowned the sound of the whistle that signalled the end of the game. _

"_Ginny, where're you going?" yelled Harry, who had found himself trapped in the midst of a mass midair hug with the rest of the team, but Ginny sped right on past them until, with an almighty crash; she collided with the commentator's podium. As the crowd shrieked and laughed, the Gryffindor team landed beside the wreckage of wood under which Zacharias was feebly stirring; Harry heard Ginny saying blithely to an irate Professor McGonagall, "Forgot to brake, Professor, sorry." _

"Go Ginny!" yelled James, laughing. Sirius and Remus joined in, while Lily tried to keep the smile off of her face.

_Laughing, Harry broke free of the rest of the team and hugged Ginny, but let go very quickly. Avoiding her gaze, he clapped cheering Ron on the back instead as, all enmity forgotten, the Gryffindor team left the pitch arm in arm, punching the air and waving to their supporters. _

The final memory formed. This time they were in a giant quidditch pitch, surrounded by thousands of cheering fans. A commentator's voice spoke.

"_In orange we have the Chudley Cannons, led by Keeper Ron Weasley! Beaters are Galvin Gudgeon and Joey Jenkins! Then we have our Chasers; Dragomir Gorgovitch, Alicia Spinnet, and Ragmar Dorkins! And last, but certainly not least, Captain and Seeker; HARRRYYYY POTTER!"_

_The cheers were deafening. Fans screamed the loudest for the boy who lived, who sped around the pitch doing loops and twirls. The Cannons then landed on the field to wait for the other team._

"_Now for our lovely ladies is green. I've been informed that we've had a change in the line-up. Starting as Keeper, we have Miss Andrea Knight! Beaters are Indira Choudry and Captain Gwenog Jones! Our talented Chasers are Glynnis Griffiths, Wilda Griffiths, and newcomer Valmai Morgan! And lastly we have our reserve Seeker; Miss Ginnny… Potter? Well folks, it seems our young wonder couple have tied the knot! You can now clearly see the 'Potter' written on Miss Weasley's back. Congratulations to the both of you! I'm sure this will be an interesting game."_

_Harry and Gwenog shook hands and both teams rose into the air._

"_And they're off! Morgan grabs the quaffle and quickly passes to Griffiths; erm... Wilda that is. The pass is intercepted by Spinnet, and off she goes towards the goal! A well-aimed bludger from Jones has hit its mark, and the Harpies are in possession again."_

_The match continued for another hour with no sight of the snitch. Harry and Ginny were both circling the pitch while keeping an eye on each other._

"_It seems the Potters are having trouble finding this snitch. This is rather unusual for Harry Potter, who normally has no trouble. Wait! I think they've seen something! Ginny Potter has gone into a dive! And Harry is right after her. He's catching up now, but they're running out time. They're nearly to the ground. I don't think Ginny has seen the snitch at all! And look! She's pulled out of the dive with just seconds to spare! Harry's just managed to avoid crashing; it's lucky he's such a good flier. It seems that Ginny Potter has taken a page out of her husband's book. She's just pulled off an amazing Wronski Feint, which everyone knows is Harry Potter's signature move. They've returned to playing height and it seems that Harry is none too pleased to be bested at his own position. Ginny just gave him a cheeky grin and returned to circling the pitch."_

_The game went on for a few more minutes with the Cannons scoring 3 more goals._

"_The score is now 150 to 90 with the Cannons in the lead. It seems that the Harpies are suffering without their star Chaser. They better find that snitch soon."_

_As if on cue, Harry and Ginny both sped upwards, chasing something that the others couldn't see._

"_It seems that both seekers have spotted the snitch for real this time. They're shoving each other back and forth, both trying to get ahead. They're both stretching for it. And it looks like Harry has it – no, wait! I don't know what just happened, but Harry has hesitated, and in an instant the snitch is in Ginny's hand! The Harpies win; 240 to 150! And, what's this? It seems Ginny is sticking her tongue out at her husband!"_

They reappeared in the classroom with most of the students laughing. Harry was glaring at Ginny. "You just _had _to put that one in, didn't you Gin?" Ginny winked at him cheekily.

"Of course!" she said. Then James piped up.

"Why didn't you catch the snitch?" Harry looked embarrassed.

"Let's just say that Ginny is _very _good at distracting people." Just then the bell rang. "Alright class. Today was a bit of a slack day, but I assure you; tomorrow will be class as usual. For homework, I'd like you each of you to make a list of the things your other teachers have taught you, as well as anything you're interested in learning. You can hand them in tomorrow. Class dismissed."

When all of the students had left, Harry said to Ginny, "Well, I guess that could have been worse."

…

A/N: I know that Harry and Ron don't actually play Professional Quidditch, but I always wanted them to, so I changed it. And I don't know if Alicia Spinnet plays either, but I needed another player so I added her. Also, I know that Ginny didn't see Fred die, but I added it in so that she would be even more affected by his death. 


	6. Memories

A/N: I'm so sorry it took me so long to write this! I'll try to do better from now on.

…

Ginny Potter had always prided herself on being strong. Growing up with six brothers, she had to be. But talking about Fred had been too much. She had finally broken down. She didn't let anyone see, of course, and she lied to Harry when he asked, but she knew that everyone knew she's been crying.

Lying in bed, listening to Harry snoring softly, she suddenly felt alone and scared. She knew that she had Harry and that he would never let anything happen to her, but she missed her parents, and she couldn't help but be scared. In her time, Tom Riddle was dead, never to return, but here he was very much alive, and now she was fighting him all over again. He invaded her dreams and she hardly got any sleep, but she didn't want to worry Harry. When it came to Tom, she didn't like to talk about it.

Slipping quietly out of bed, she made her way over to the cabinet where they were keeping the pensieve. She took it out and set it on the table before placing a few memories into it. She jabbed the contents with her wand and figures rose from the basin, forming a 3D image. There was Fred, laughing at one of George's jokes; there he was, twirling her around when she was 12; dancing together offbeat at Bill and Fleur's wedding; there was Fred and George letting off a display of fireworks when they left the school in her Fourth year; there was Fred battling bravely in the final battle; there was him being hit by the killing curse; him lying lifeless on the floor, his eyes unseeing. As she started to cry, she felt Harry's strong arms circle her waist, and his lips kiss her neck. She turned to cry into his shoulder.

"I-I just miss him s-so much. And I c-can't help but f-feel like we're f-fighting him a-all over again. And m-meeting your p-parents and knowing that they're g-going to d-die; it's not fair!" she cried. Harry held her close as she shook with sobs. Finally they subsided.

"D'you think you can face the 7th years tomorrow, Gin? Because if you can't, it's perfectly fine."

"No," she sniffed. "I think I'll be okay. What do you have planned?"

"Well, I was thinking I'd just pick some things off their lists and just wing it," he said, smiling.

"Oh, Harry," she sighed. "You never change, do you?"

"Nope," he said. "C'mon Gin, let's go to bed. We have a busy day tomorrow."

…

A/N: Okay, so I know that this was insanely short, but I just wanted to have a short chapter about Ginny. The next chapter will definitely be longer, I promise!


	7. Boggarts and Tom

A/N: Here's the next chapter. Enjoy!

…

James and the other Marauders were running down the hall at full speed. They had Defence right after a free period in the afternoon, and had run late in planning a new prank for the new professors. James was curious as to what they had planned for their class. The young professors seemed a lot more competent than the other teachers they had had in the subject. James had no time to wonder, though, because he and his friends were late for class. They ran breathless into the classroom minutes after the bell had rung and doubled over gasping for breath.

"Sorry - we're late - professors," James managed to choke out. Harry merely smiled at them.

"Take your seats, boys. I'm sure you'll get your punishment before the day is through." As they took the only empty seats at the back of the room, James heard Sirius grumbling about not being close enough to Ginny. Harry turned back to the rest of the class before speaking. "I hope you've all done your homework." He waved his wand and 11 pieces of parchment flew into his outstretched hand. "Ah, Macnair? I assume you thought it was below you to do your homework?" Macnair sneered at Harry, but didn't say anything. "20 points from Slytherin." Harry started flipping through their papers. James saw him stop at one, smirk, and show it to Ginny. She started smiling too.

"I suppose you thought it would be funny, Mr. Snape, to put werewolves on your sheet?" James felt Remus stiffen beside him and saw a smirk appear of Snape's face. "I'm curious as to why you put that." James saw the smile slip off of Snape's face.

"I thought that would be obvious; they're dark creatures." Ginny stepped forward.

"That's the thing, Mr. Snape. We have seen no evidence to suggest that werewolves are dark." Everyone looked shocked, but no one more than Remus.

"But professor," said the Hufflepuff girl, "the werewolves sided with You-Know-Who! They kill innocent people every full moon!" James knew that Remus was getting angry; he could feel him shaking. He wanted to throttle Snape. Of course he would do something as awful as that. Harry stepped in.

"Can anyone tell me," he said, "what the difference between an animagus and a werewolf is?" The room was quiet. Harry tapped his wand on the pensieve and a young girl with bushy brown hair and rather large front teeth rose from its depths. James thought she looked to be about 13. She had her hand stretched as far as it would go into the air. She reminded him of Lily.

"_Please, sir. An Animagus is a wizard who _elects_ to turn into an animal. A werewolf has no choice._ _With each full moon he no longer remembers who he is. He'd kill his best friend."_

Then she dissolved into the basin.

"That was my good friend, Hermione Granger; the smartest witch of her age. She probably knew more in her third year than some of you do now," said Harry, thoughtfully. "Now; do you all understand why werewolves aren't dark creatures? When they transform, they have no say in the matter; there is no stopping it. With each full moon the person transforms and no longer remembers who he or she is, and would kill even their best friend given the opportunity. As for siding with Voldemort," everyone flinched at the name, "I don't blame them. I mean, look how everyone treats them! Werewolves are regarded with fear and disgust by wizarding society. Known werewolves are shunned by society and discriminated against within the wizarding world. It's nearly impossible for a werewolf to get a job in the wizarding community. And then there's Voldemort, who is promising them freedom. A man makes a choice to become a death eater. He has no one to blame but himself. It takes a lot of courage to fight for what is right. As a great man once said, 'It matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be.'

"I knew a man who was good, and kind, and brave. He was the best Defence teacher I ever had; actually, he was the one to teach me the Patronus Charm that I showed you yesterday. He fought in the Final Battle so that his son could live a life without Voldemort. He was one of the bravest men I ever knew, and I'll have you know that he was a werewolf." He paused, and it seemed to James that he was reliving a horrible memory.

"Now, with that settled, I think we should find a more appropriate subject to learn about in this class." James watched him flip through a few more sheets before settling on one. "Mr. Pettigrew? You've never learned how to defeat a Boggart? I learned that in my third year!" James turned around to look at Peter. He looked embarrassed. "Well, I suppose that's as good a place to start as any. We just so happen to have a Boggart on hand." Ginny headed towards their office. "I was going to show it to my third years. Can anyone tell me what a Boggart is? Miss Evans?"

"A Boggart is a shape-shifting creature that takes on the form of a person's worst fear. Because of their shape-shifting ability, no one knows what a Boggart looks like when it is alone, as it instantly changes into your worst fear when you first see it."

"Excellent, Lily. Now, the charm that repels a Boggart is simple, yet it requires force of mind. You see, the thing that really finishes a Boggart is laughter. What you need to do is force it to assume a shape that you find amusing. We will practice the charm without wands first. Repeat after me. Riddikulus!"

"Riddikulus!" echoed the class. James saw Ginny come back into the room levitating a large trunk that shook violently.

"Now comes the hard part," said Harry. "I want all of you to think of the thing that frightens you most in this world. Then I want you to think of some way to make it comical. You will picture it in your mind, what you want to happen. Mr. Black, would you like to go first?" James saw Sirius go pale and slowly walk up to the front of the room. This was very unusual for him; normally he would be bouncing and joking around. James wondered what his greatest fear was. He watched as Sirius drew his wand and pointed at the chest. Ginny lifted the top and out walked… himself?

Standing at the front of the room was none other than Sirius Black. But this one was different. He wore Slytherin robes and he had a sneer on his face as he looked the real Sirius in the eye and hissed, "Blood traitor! Siding with muggles and mudbloods and half-breeds! The Dark Lord will win this war and I will be rewarded! You are nothing but a –"

"RIDDIKULUS!"

Then with a bang, the Slytherin Sirius was gone and replaced by the Gryffindor Sirius who acted as if he had swallowed a love potion.

"Oh, Sirius! My great love! You are the most handsome lad I have ever met! If I was not your reflection I would marry you!" The Boggart-Sirius was on his knees looking up at Sirius with puppy-dog eyes. The class started laughing.

"Who's next?" asked Ginny. James stood and walked to the front. He figured he may as well get it over with. Immediately, Sirius turned into Lily, except she was lying on the floor, covered in blood and staring with lifeless eyes. James heard a gasp from behind him and could only assume that it was Lily. He took one look at Boggart-Lily and quickly cast the charm.

"Riddikulus!"

Suddenly, Lily picked herself off the floor and began scolding him.

"Honestly, James. Did you really think I was dead? How stupid could you be? I mean, I know you're a pig-headed git, but are you really that thick? Do you not see me standing here? Well?" she ranted, souding very much like his mother. The whole class was laughing by that point, other than Lily, who had her face buried in her hands. The rest of the students each took a turn with the Boggart, and faced more normal fears like spiders and snakes, until Remus was the only person left to go. James saw the teachers exchange a glance, and Ginny stepped forward.

"I want to show you all my greatest fear," she said, and then paused. "It's time for a history lesson." She stepped in front of the Boggart and it turned into a handsome teenage boy in Slytherin robes. James thought he looked familiar, but he couldn't figure out where he'd seen him before. "Hello Tom," Ginny said bravely.

"Well, well, well. If it isn't little Ginny Weasley. Been writing in any diaries lately? I doubt any of them were as friendly as mine."

"Riddikulus!" The boy tripped on his now too long Gryffindor robes. James could see Ginny's mask slipping. She was genuinely afraid of this boy. He saw Harry step forward to face the Boggart and it turned into a Dementor. Harry didn't even use the same spell. Instead he shouted, "Expecto Patronum!" and his silvery stag chased the Boggart back into the trunk. Then he turned to face the class.

"Can anyone tell me who that was?" he asked. The class was silent. "His name is Tom Riddle." The class remained quiet. "No one's heard of him?" Finally Sirius spoke up.

"He won an award for special services to the school! I must have cleaned it a hundred times!"

"Very good, Mr. Black. Tom Riddle is also known by another name, one much more famous," he said. "Ginny?" James noticed that she had gone extremely pale. Nevertheless, she nodded and brought her wand to her temple with a shaking hand, extracting the memories and placing them in the pensieve. Harry did the same. Then Harry gestured for them all to enter the pensieve.

Upon entering, the first thing James saw was a tiny red-haired girl that could only be Ginny. She was sitting in the Gryffindor common room, writing in a diary. In shock, James watched as the words she had put on the page disappeared and new writing took its place. He looked around and saw the real Ginny standing next to him.

"That's me when I was eleven," she told the class. "And that," she said, pointing to the diary, "is Tom Riddle's diary." James watched as Ginny poured her heart out to the diary, telling Tom about how her brothers teased her, how she had to come to school with second-hand robes and books, and how she thought Harry would never like her.

The memory changed, and they saw a peaky looking Ginny waking up covered in rooster feathers. They saw her looking confused, and walking down the corridor to see a message on the wall, written in blood. _The Chamber of Secrets has been opened. Enemies of the heir, beware._ James began to get a horrible feeling that this was the possession that Ginny had told them about. But that would mean…

The memory changed again, and this time it was a young Harry that they saw, along with another young boy who had red hair and freckles and looked similar to Ginny.

"_All students are to return to their House dormitories at once. All teachers return to the staff room immediately." Harry wheeled around to stare at Ron._

_"""""Not another attack. Not now."_

"_What'll we do?""" asked Ron, aghast. ""Go back to the dormitory?" _

_""No,"" said Harry, glancing around. There was an ugly sort of wardrobe to his left, full of the teachers' cloaks. ""In here. Let's hear what it's all about. Then we can tell them what we've found out."" They hid themselves inside it, listening to the rumbling of hundreds of people moving overhead, and the staff room door banging open._

_From between the musty folds of the cloaks, they watched the teachers filtering into the room. Some of them were looking puzzled, others downright scared. Then Professor McGonagall arrived._

_""It has happened,"" she told the silent staff room. ""A student has been taken by the monster. Right into the Chamber itself."" Professor Flitwick let out a squeal. Professor Sprout clapped her hands over her mouth. Snape gripped the back of a chair very hard and said, """How can you be sure?"_

"_"The Heir of Slytherin,"" said Professor McGonagall, who was very white, """"left another message. Right underneath the first one. 'Her skeleton will lie in the Chamber forever.'" Professor Flitwick burst into tears._

_""Who is it?"" asked Madam Hooch, who had sunk, weak-kneed, into a chair. "Which student?" _

_"""Ginny Weasley,"" said Professor McGonagall.  
>Harry felt Ron slide silently down onto the wardrobe floor beside him.<em>

The memory shifted and a new one formed. Harry was in a strange room, running towards a figure lying at the other end.

_He kept his eyes narrowed, ready to clamp them shut at the smallest sign of movement. The hollow eye sockets of the stone snakes seemed to be following him. More than once, with a jolt of the stomach, he thought he saw one stir._

_Then, as he drew level with the last pair of pillars, a statue high as the Chamber itself loomed into view, standing against the back wall._

_Harry had to crane his neck to look up into the giant face above: It was ancient and monkey-ish, with a long, thin beard that fell almost to the bottom of the wizard's sweeping stone robes, where two enormous gray feet stood on the smooth Chamber floor. And between the feet, face-down, lay a small, black-robed figure with flaming-red hair._

_""Ginny!"" Harry muttered, sprinting to her and dropping to his knees._

_""Ginny - don't be dead - please don't be dead -"""_

_He flung his wand aside, grabbed Ginny's shoulders, and turned her over. Her face was white as marble, and as cold, yet her eyes were closed, so she wasn't Petrified. But then she must be… """Ginny, please wake up,"" Harry muttered desperately, shaking her._

_Ginny's head lolled hopelessly from side to side._

_""She won't wake,"" said a soft voice._

_Harry jumped and spun around on his knees._

_A tall, black-haired boy was leaning against the nearest pillar, watching. He was strangely blurred around the edges, as though Harry were looking at him through a misted window. But there was no mistaking him. _

"_"Tom - Tom Riddle."" Riddle nodded, not taking his eyes off Harry's face._

_"""What d'you mean, she won't wake.?" Harry said desperately. "She's not - she's not -." _

_""She's still alive,"" said Riddle. ""But only just."" Harry stared at him. Tom Riddle had been at Hogwarts fifty years ago, yet here he stood, a weird, misty light shining about him, not a day older than sixteen._

_""Are you a ghost?"" Harry asked uncertainly._

_"""A memory,": said Riddle quietly. ""Preserved in a diary for fifty years."_

_He pointed toward the floor near the statue's giant toes. Lying open there was the little black diary Harry had found in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. For a second, Harry wondered how it had got there - but there were more pressing matters to deal with._

_"""You've got to help me, Tom,"" Harry said, raising Ginny's head again." "We've got to get her out of here. There's a basilisk ... I don't know where it is, but it could be along any moment ... Please, help me!" Riddle didn't move. Harry, sweating, managed to hoist Ginny half off the floor, and bent to pick up his wand again._

_But his wand had gone._

_""Did you see -."" He looked up. Riddle was still watching him - twirling Harry's wand between his long fingers._

_""Thanks,""" said Harry, stretching out his hand for it._

_A smile curled the corners of Riddle's mouth. He continued to stare at Harry, twirling the wand idly._

_""Listen,"" said Harry urgently, his knees sagging with Ginny's dead weight. """We've got to go! If the basilisk comes -" _

_""It won't come until it is called,"" said Riddle calmly._ _Harry lowered Ginny back onto the floor, unable to hold her up any longer._

_""What d'you mean?"" he asked. """Look, give me my wand, I might need it -"" Riddle's smile broadened._

_""You won't be needing it,"" he said._

_Harry stared at him._

_""What d'you mean, I won't be -." _

_"""I've waited a long time for this, Harry Potter,"" said Riddle. ""For the chance to see you. To speak to you." _

_""Look,"" said Harry, losing patience, """I don't think you get it. We're in the Chamber of Secrets. We can talk later -"_

_""We're going to talk now,"" said Riddle, still smiling broadly, and he pocketed Harry's wand._

_Harry stared at him. There was something very funny going on here._

_""How did Ginny get like this?"" he asked slowly._

_""Well, that's an interesting question,"" said Riddle pleasantly. ""And quite a long story. I suppose the real reason Ginny Weasley's like this is because she opened her heart and spilled all her secrets to an invisible stranger." _

_""What are you talking about?"" asked Harry._

_""The diary,"" said Riddle. "My diary. Little Ginny's been writing in it for months and months, telling me all her pitiful worries and woes - how her brothers tease her, how she had to come to school with second-hand robes and books, how"-" Riddle's eyes glinted, "-"how she didn't think famous, good, great Harry Potter would ever like her . . . .""" All the time he spoke, Riddle's eyes never left Harry's face. There was an almost hungry look in them._

_""It's very boring, having to listen to the silly little troubles of an eleven- year-old girl,"" he went on. ""But I was patient. I wrote back. I was sympathetic, I was kind. Ginny simply loved me. 'No one's ever understood me like you, Tom ... I'm so glad I've got this diary to confide in ... It's like having a friend I can carry around in my pocket . . . .'"_

_Riddle laughed, a high, cold laugh that didn't suit him. It made the hairs stand up on the back of Harry's neck._

_""If I say it myself, Harry, I've always been able to charm the people I needed. So Ginny poured out her soul to me, and her soul happened to be exactly what I wanted. I grew stronger and stronger on a diet of her deepest fears, her darkest secrets. I grew powerful, far more powerful than little Miss Weasley. Powerful enough to start feeding her a few of my secrets, to start pouring a little of my soul back into her. . ." _

_""What d'you mean?"" said Harry, whose mouth had gone very dry._

_""Haven't you guessed yet, Harry Potter?"" said Riddle softly. ""Ginny Weasley opened the Chamber of Secrets. She strangled the school roosters and daubed threatening messages on the walls. She set the Serpent of Slytherin on four Mudbloods, and the Squib's cat."_

_""No,"" Harry whispered._

_""Yes,"" said Riddle, calmly. ""Of course, she didn't know what she was doing at first. It was very amusing. I wish you could have seen her new diary entries ... far more interesting, they became ... 'Dear Tom,'"" he recited, watching Harry's horrified face, "'I think I'm losing my memory. There are rooster feathers all over my robes and 1 don't know how they got there. Dear Tom, l can't remember what 1 did on the night of Halloween, but a cat was attacked and I've got paint all down my front. Dear Tom, Percy keeps telling me I'm pale and I'm not myself. I think he _suspects _me... There was another attack today and I don't know where I was. Tom, what am I going to do? I think I'm going mad... I think I'm the one attacking everyone, Tom!'"" Harry's fists were clenched, the nails digging deep into his palms._

_""It took a very long time for stupid little Ginny to stop trusting her diary,"" said Riddle. """But she finally became suspicious and tried to dispose of it. And that's where you came in, Harry. You found it, and I couldn't have been more delighted. Of all the people who could have picked it up, it was you, the very person I was most anxious to meet."_

_""And why did you want to meet me?" "asked Harry. Anger was coursing through him, and it was an effort to keep his voice steady._

_""Well, you see, Ginny told me all about you, Harry,"" said Riddle. ""Your whole fascinating history." His eyes roved over the lightning scar on Harry's forehead, and their expression grew hungrier. ""I knew I must find out more about you, talk to you, meet you if I could. So I decided to show you my famous capture of that great oaf, Hagrid, to gain your trust -" _

_""Hagrid's my friend,"" said Harry, his voice now shaking. ""And you framed him, didn't you? I thought you made a mistake, but -"" Riddle laughed his high laugh again._

_""It was my word against Hagrid's, Harry. Well, you can imagine how it looked to old Armando Dippet. On the one hand, Tom Riddle, poor but brilliant, parentless but so brave, school prefect, model student ... on the other hand, big, blundering Hagrid, in trouble every other week, trying to raise werewolf cubs under his bed, sneaking off to the Forbidden Forest to wrestle trolls ... but I admit, even I was surprised how well the plan worked. I thought someone must realize that Hagrid couldn't possibly be the Heir of Slytherin. It had taken me five whole years to find out everything I could about the Chamber of Secrets and discover the secret entrance ... as though Hagrid had the brains, or the power! Only the Transfiguration teacher, Dumbledore, seemed to think Hagrid was innocent. He persuaded Dippet to keep Hagrid and train him as gamekeeper. Yes, I think Dumbledore might have guessed ... Dumbledore never seemed to like me as much as the other teachers did."_

_""I bet Dumbledore saw right through you,"" said Harry, his teeth gritted._

_""Well, he certainly kept an annoyingly close watch on me after Hagrid was expelled,"" said Riddle carelessly. ""I knew it wouldn't be safe to open the Chamber again while I was still at school. But I wasn't going to waste those long years I'd spent searching for it. I decided to leave behind a diary, preserving my sixteen-year-old self in its pages, so that one day, with luck, I would be able to lead another in my footsteps, and finish Salazar Slytherin's noble work." _

_""Well, you haven't finished it,"" said Harry triumphantly. ""No one's died this time, not even the cat. In a few hours the Mandrake Draught will be ready and everyone who was Petrified will be all right again -" _

_""Haven't I already told you,"" said Riddle quietly, ""that killing Mudbloods doesn't matter to me anymore. For many months now, my new target has been -you."" Harry stared at him._

_""Imagine how angry I was when the next time my diary was opened, it was Ginny who was writing to me, not you. She saw you with the diary, you see, and panicked. What if you found out how to work it, and I repeated all her secrets to you. What if, even worse, I told you who'd been strangling roosters. So the foolish little brat waited until your dormitory was deserted and stole it back. But I knew what I must do. It was clear to me that you were on the trail of Slytherin's heir. From everything Ginny had told me about you, I knew you would go to any lengths to solve the mystery – particularly if one of your best friends was attacked. And Ginny had told me the whole school was buzzing because you could speak Parseltongue ..._

_"So I made Ginny write her own farewell on the wall and come down here to wait. She struggled and cried and became very boring. But there isn't much life left in her... She put too much into the diary, into me. Enough to let me leave its pages at last... I have been waiting for you to appear since we arrived here. I knew you'd come. I have many questions for you, Harry Potter." _

_""Like what?"" Harry spat, fists still clenched._

_""Well,"" said Riddle, smiling pleasantly, ""how is it that you a skinny boy with no extraordinary magical talent managed to defeat the greatest wizard of all time? How did you escape with nothing but a scar, while Lord Voldemort's powers were destroyed?"" There was an odd red gleam in his hungry eyes now._

_""Why do you care how I escaped?"" said Harry slowly. ""Voldemort was after your time..."_

_"""Voldemort,"" said Riddle softly, ""is my past, present, and future, Harry Potter . . . ."" He pulled Harry's wand from his pocket and began to trace it through the air, writing three shimmering words: TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE. Then he waved the wand once, and the letters of his name rearranged themselves: I AM LORD VOLDEMORT. ""You see,"" he whispered. ""It was a name I was already using at Hogwarts, to my most intimate friends only, of course. You think I was going to use my filthy Muggle father's name forever? I, in whose veins runs the blood of Salazar Slytherin himself, through my mother's side. I, keep the name of a foul, common Muggle, who abandoned me even before I was born, just because he found out his wife was a witch? No, Harry - I fashioned myself a new name, a name I knew wizards everywhere would one day fear to speak, when I had become the greatest sorcerer in the world!" _

_Harry's brain seemed to have jammed. He stared numbly at Riddle, at the orphaned boy who had grown up to murder Harry's own parents, and so many others . At last he forced himself to speak._

_""You're not,"" he said, his quiet voice full of hatred._

_""Not what?"" snapped Riddle._

_""Not the greatest sorcerer in the world,"" said Harry, breathing fast._

_""Sorry to disappoint you and all that, but the greatest wizard in the world is Albus Dumbledore. Everyone says so. Even when you were strong, you didn't dare try and take over at Hogwarts. Dumbledore saw through you when you were at school and he still frightens you now, wherever you're hiding these days -""" The smile had gone from Riddle's face, to be replaced by a very ugly look._

_""Dumbledore's been driven out of this castle by the mere memory of me!"" he hissed._

_""He's not as gone as you might think!"" Harry retorted. He was speaking at random, wanting to scare Riddle, wishing rather than believing it to be true Riddle opened his mouth, but froze._

The memory changed again, and the whole class saw Harry with a sword in his hand, fighting a giant snake.

_The basilisk's head was falling, its body coiling around, hitting pillars as it twisted to face him. He could see the vast, bloody eye sockets, see the mouth stretching wide, wide enough to swallow him whole, lined with fangs long as his sword, thin, glittering, and venomous. It lunged blindly. Harry dodged and it hit the Chamber wall. It lunged again, and its forked tongue lashed Harry's side. He raised the sword in both his hands. The basilisk lunged again, and this time its aim was true. Harry threw his whole weight behind the sword and drove it to the hilt into the roof of the serpent's mouth. But as warm blood drenched Harry's arms, he felt a searing pain just above his elbow. One long, poisonous fang was sinking deeper and deeper into his arm and it splintered as the basilisk keeled over sideways and fell, twitching, to the floor._

_Harry slid down the wall. He gripped the fang that was spreading poison through his body and wrenched it out of his arm. But he knew it was too late. White-hot pain was spreading slowly and steadily from the wound. Even as he dropped the fang and watched his own blood soaking his robes, his vision went foggy. The Chamber was dissolving in a whirl of dull color._

_A patch of scarlet swam past, and Harry heard a soft clatter of claws beside him._

_""Fawkes,"" said Harry thickly. ""You were fantastic, Fawkes . . . ."" He felt the bird lay its beautiful head on the spot where the serpent's fang had pierced him._ _He could hear echoing footsteps and then a dark shadow moved in front of him._

_""You're dead, Harry Potter,"" said Riddle's voice above him. """Dead. Even Dumbledore's bird knows it. Do you see what he's doing, Potter? He's crying."" Harry blinked. Fawkes's head slid in and out of focus. Thick, pearly tears were trickling down the glossy feathers._

_""I'm going to sit here and watch you die, Harry Potter. Take your time. I'm in no hurry."" Harry felt drowsy. Everything around him seemed to be spinning._

_""So ends the famous Harry Potter,"" said Riddle's distant voice. """Alone in the Chamber of Secrets, forsaken by his friends, defeated at last by the Dark Lord he so unwisely challenged. You'll be back with your dear Mudblood mother soon, Harry. She bought you twelve years of borrowed time, but Lord Voldemort got you in the end, as you knew he must." _

_If this is dying, thought Harry, it's not so bad. Even the pain was leaving him._

_But was this dying? Instead of going black, the Chamber seemed to be coming back into focus. Harry gave his head a little shake and there was Fawkes, still resting his head on Harry's arm. A pearly patch of tears was shining all around the wound - except that there was no wound._

_""Get away, bird,"" said Riddle's voice suddenly. """Get away from him - I said, get away -"" Harry raised his head. Riddle was pointing Harry's wand at Fawkes; there was a bang like a gun, and Fawkes took flight again in a whirl of gold and scarlet._

_""Phoenix tears-" said Riddle quietly, staring at Harry's arm. """Of course ... healing powers ... I forgot…" He looked into Harry's face. """But it makes no difference. In fact, I prefer it this way. Just you and me, Harry Potter ... you and me..."_

_He raised the wand. Then, in a rush of wings, Fawkes had soared back overhead and something fell into Harry's lap - the diary._

_For a split second, both Harry and Riddle, wand still raised, stared at it._

_Then, without thinking, without considering, as though he had meant to do it all along, Harry seized the basilisk fang on the floor next to him and plunged it straight into the heart of the book._

_There was a long, dreadful, piercing scream. Ink spurted out of the diary in torrents, streaming over Harry's hands, flooding the floor._

_Riddle was writhing and twisting, screaming and flailing and then he had gone. Harry's wand fell to the floor with a clatter and there was silence. Silence except for the steady "drip, drip" of ink still oozing from the diary. The basilisk venom had burned a sizzling hole right through it._

_Shaking all over, Harry pulled himself up. His head was spinning as though he'd just traveled miles by Floo powder. Slowly, he gathered together his wand and the Sorting Hat, and, with a huge tug, retrieved the glittering sword from the roof of the basilisk's mouth._

_Then came a faint moan from the end of the Chamber. Ginny was stirring. As Harry hurried toward her, she sat up. Her bemused eyes traveled from the huge form of the dead basilisk, over Harry, in his blood-soaked robes, then to the diary in his hand. She drew a great, shuddering gasp and tears began to pour down her face._

_""Harry - oh, Harry - I tried to tell you at b-breakfast, but I c-couldn't say it in front of Percy - it was me, Harry - but I - I s-swear I d-didn't mean to - R-Riddle made me, he t-took me over - and - how did you kill that - that thing? W-where's Riddle? The last thing I r- remember is him coming out of the diary—"_

_""It's all right,"" said Harry, holding up the diary, and showing Ginny the fang hole, "Riddle's finished. "Look! Him and the basilisk. C'mon, Ginny, let's get out of here -" _

_""I'm going to be expelled!"" Ginny wept as Harry helped her awkwardly to her feet. ""I've looked forward to coming to Hogwarts ever since B-Bill came and n-now I'll have to leave and - w-what'll Mum and Dad say?" _

_Fawkes was waiting for them, hovering in the Chamber entrance. Harry urged Ginny forward; they stepped over the motionless coils of the dead basilisk, through the echoing gloom, and back into the tunnel._

_Harry heard the stone doors close behind them with a soft hiss._

_After a few minutes' progress up the dark tunnel, a distant sound of slowly shifting rock reached Harry's ears._

_""Ron!"" Harry yelled, speeding up. """Ginny's okay! I've got her!"" He heard Ron give a strangled cheer, and they turned the next bend to see his eager face staring through the sizable gap he had managed to make in the rock fall._

_""Ginny!"" Ron thrust an arm through the gap in the rock to pull her through first. ""You're alive!"_

The whole class landed back in the classroom. Ginny stepped forward, still pale and shaky from reliving her worst memory.

"What - what was that?" asked the Hufflepuff girl, visibly shaken.

"That," Ginny said, "was me being possessed by Voldemort."


	8. Memories of a Future Life I

1A/N: I am so sorry I haven't updated. I was gone away for a week and I tried to get this chapter posted before I left, but it just didn't happen. I apologize to any of you who kept checking back and were getting annoyed at me for not posting.

...

James' mind was wandering at dinner as he pushed his food around on his plate. The other Marauders could tell that something was on his mind, so they didn't bother him about it. When they returned to Gryffindor Tower, though, and were in the privacy of their room, Sirius and Remus finally asked him what was bothering him. Wormtail had disappeared somewhere after dinner.

"It's just... I hardly even know him, and if I'm going to be dead in a few years..." he trailed off. "And then there's the whole 'I survived the killing curse' thing. I mean, it's not even possible!" He paused again. "It's not fair!" he burst out. He had a pained expression on his face. Remus and Sirius shared a look.

"If you want to get to know him, why don't you just ask him?" Remus suggested. "Tonight, even. We'll go with you, if you want." James looked up in surprise.

"You guys would do that for me?" he asked.

"Of course, stupid!" said Sirius. "We're your best mates!"

"Okay then," said James, looking determined. "Let's go get some answers!"

He leapt off the bed and headed downstairs with the other two trailing behind him. The Common Room was filled with people doing homework and James spotted Lily sitting in one of the stuffed armchairs near the portrait hole, her nose in a book. She looked up as they walked past.

"Where do you think you're going, Potter?" she asked. James decided to tell her the truth.

"We're off to talk to the new professors. I figured, since we're going to die in a few years..." He stopped suddenly, realizing what he's said. "Sorry, Lily," he said, seeing her wince. "Would you like to come with us?" She looked surprised at being invited, but she nodded and followed them out the portrait hole.

As they neared the Defense classroom, James began to have second thoughts. Harry and Ginny had lived through a terrible time. Did he really want to know the gory details? As he stood in front of the door, trying to gather the courage to knock, he wondered what kind of life his son was forced to lead. He was jarred out of his thoughts when Ginny's voice from inside the classroom called, "Are you going to knock, or not?" James heard someone, he could only assume it was Harry, scold her. Gathering his courage, he pushed open the door and walked in, Remus, Sirius, and Lily following close behind. It seemed as though the professors were expecting them.

Harry sat at the desk, correcting homework with a familiar looking piece of parchment next to him, while Ginny appeared to be practicing spells with a dummy rigged to look like a Death Eater. When James looked again, he noticed the pensieve sitting on the desk as well, memories already swirling inside. He also caught Sirius ogling Ginny, who was wearing very tight shorts and a tank top. He jabbed him with his elbow. They all watched as Ginny did a back-flip before kicking the dummy in the face. James saw Harry absentmindedly rubbing his jaw with a painful expression on his face.

"Anyways," Harry said, looking back at them. "I'm sure you didn't come here to be frightened by Ginny. What is it that you wanted?" James had a funny feeling that he already knew the answer.

"We wanted to know more about you; what your life was like." Harry sighed as if he knew that that was what they wanted.

Very well," he said. "I'm sure you all know the drill by now." He pointed to the pensieve. One by one they all entered. Looking around, James saw that they were in an extremely neat house. Glancing into the sitting room, he could see several see several children dancing around while some adults watched. Two of them, he noticed, were particularly large, and another quite skinny. James watched the children freeze with the music and was confused. What were the children doing?

"Musical statues," Lily breathed. At the confused looks, she added, "it's a muggle game."

_Harry couldn't remember the_ _last time he had_ _been allowed to participate in one of Dudley's birthday games. Currently, he was playing musical statues with some of Dudley's friends from primary school while the other parents watched. He noticed Aunt Marge glaring at him from her seat on the couch, and wondered why she hated him so much. Finally, the game was down to Harry and Dudley. Harry was surprised to be good at this game; it was the only thing that he was really good at. As the music paused, Harry froze with it, only to be whacked with Aunt Marge's walking stick. Falling to the floor in pain, he wondered why his life was so unfair._

A new memory formed in front of their eyes. Harry, looking a few years older, was wishing himself a happy birthday in a tiny room that was so small he could barely squeeze his bed inside.

_"Happy birthday to you," he sang, quite out of tune. But he didn't get to finish the song because someone was banging on the door to his cupboard. _

_ "Get up, boy!" Aunt Petunia yelled in her shrill voice. "We're going to the zoo. You, of course, will be staying with Mrs. Figg, but I want you up early to fix breakfast for Vernon and Dudders."_

_ Harry groaned._

The memory shifted again, and this time Harry was outside in a tree.

_Harry climbed up the tree as quick as he could. Aunt Marge's dog, Ripper, was lunging for his ankles because he had accidently stepped on his tail. He clung to the tree for dear life as the little dog tried to climb the tree, barking like mad. Aunt Marge just laughed at him, telling him he deserved it. The light was fading quickly, and Harry was getting hungry, but still Ripper barked at him, and Aunt Marge refused to call him off. Finally, near midnight, when Harry was nearly asleep, she clipped him to his leash and brought him inside. Harry nearly fell from the tree when he tried to climb down using his stiff muscles._

Then they saw a slightly older Harry at the zoo, talking to a snake.

_The snake jerked its head toward Uncle Vernon and Dudley, then raised its eyes to the ceiling. It gave Harry a look that said quite plainly: "I get that all the time."_

_ "I know," Harry murmured through the glass, though he wasn't sure the snake could hear him. "It must be really annoying."_

_The snake nodded vigorously._

"_Where do you come from, anyway?" Harry asked._

_The snake jabbed its tail at a little sign next to the glass. Harry peered at it._

**Boa Constrictor, Brazil.**

"_Was it nice there?" The boa constrictor jabbed its tail at the sign again and Harry read on: This specimen was bred in the zoo. "Oh, I see - so you've never been to Brazil." As the snake shook its head, a deafening shout behind Harry made both of them jump._

"_DUDLEY! MR. DURSLEY! COME AND LOOK AT THIS SNAKE! YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT IT'S DOING!" Dudley came waddling toward them as fast as he could._

"_Out of the way, you," he said, punching Harry in the ribs. Caught by surprise, Harry fell hard on the concrete floor. What came next happened so fast no one saw how it happened - one second, Piers and Dudley were leaning right up close to the glass, the next, they had leapt back with howls of horror._

_Harry sat up and gasped; the glass front of the boa constrictor's tank had vanished. The great snake was uncoiling itself rapidly, slithering out onto the floor. People throughout the reptile house screamed and started running for the exits._

_As the snake slid swiftly past him, Harry could have sworn a low, hissing voice said, "Brazil, here I come... Thanksss, amigo." The keeper of the reptile house was in shock._

"_But the glass," he kept saying, "where did the glass go?"_

_The zoo director himself made Aunt Petunia a cup of strong, sweet tea while he apologized over and over again. Piers and Dudley could only gibber. As far as Harry had seen, the snake hadn't done anything except snap playfully at their heels as it passed, but by the time they were all back in Uncle Vernon's car, Dudley was telling them how it had nearly bitten off his leg, while Piers was swearing it had tried to squeeze him to death. But worst of all, for Harry at least, was Piers calming down enough to say, "Harry was talking to it, weren't you, Harry?" _

_Uncle Vernon waited until Piers was safely out of the house before starting on Harry. He was so angry he could hardly speak. He managed to say, "Go - cupboard - stay - no meals," before he collapsed into a chair, and Aunt Petunia had to run and get him a large brandy._

The scene shifted again, and they saw Harry sitting at the table with his Aunt and Uncle and cousin.

_They heard the click of the mail slot and flop of letters on the doormat._

"_Get the mail, Dudley," said Uncle Vernon from behind his paper._

"_Make Harry get it." _

"_Get the mail, Harry." _

"_Make Dudley get it." _

"_Poke him with your Smelting stick, Dudley." _

_Harry dodged the Smelting stick and went to get the mail. Three things lay on the doormat: a postcard from Uncle Vernon's sister Marge, who was vacationing on the Isle of Wight, a brown envelope that looked like a bill, and - a letter for Harry._

_Harry picked it up and stared at it, his heart twanging like a giant elastic band. No one, ever, in his whole life, had written to him. Who would? He had no friends, no other relatives - he didn't belong to the library, so he'd never even got rude notes asking for books back. Yet here it was, a letter, addressed so plainly there could be no mistake: Mr. H. Potter, The Cupboard under the Stairs, 4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey. The envelope was thick and heavy, made of yellowish parchment, and the address was written in emerald-green ink. There was no stamp._

_Turning the envelope over, his hand trembling, Harry saw a purple wax seal bearing a coat of arms; a lion, an eagle, a badger, and a snake surrounding a large letter H. _

"_Hurry up, boy!" shouted Uncle Vernon from the kitchen. "What are you doing, checking for letter bombs?" He chuckled at his own joke._

_Harry went back to the kitchen, still staring at his letter. He handed Uncle Vernon the bill and the postcard, sat down, and slowly began to open the yellow envelope._

_Uncle Vernon ripped open the bill, snorted in disgust, and flipped over the postcard._

"_Marge's ill," he informed Aunt Petunia. "Ate a funny whelk -."_

"_Dad!" said Dudley suddenly. "Dad, Harry's got something!" Harry was on the point of unfolding his letter, which was written on the same heavy parchment as the envelope, when it was jerked sharply out of his hand by Uncle Vernon._

"_That's mine!" said Harry, trying to snatch it back._

"_Who'd be writing to you?" sneered Uncle Vernon, shaking the letter open with one hand and glancing at it. His face went from red to green faster than a set of traffic lights. And it didn't stop there. Within seconds it was the grayish white of old porridge._

"_P-P-Petunia!" he gasped._

_Dudley tried to grab the letter to read it, but Uncle Vernon held it high out of his reach. Aunt Petunia took it curiously and read the first line. For a moment it looked as though she might faint. She clutched her throat and made a choking noise._

"_Vernon! Oh my goodness - Vernon!" They stared at each other, seeming to have forgotten that Harry and Dudley were still in the room. Dudley wasn't used to being ignored. He gave his father a sharp tap on the head with his Smelting stick._

"_I want to read that letter," he said loudly. _

"_I want to read it," said Harry furiously, "as it's mine."_

"_Get out, both of you," croaked Uncle Vernon, stuffing the letter back inside its envelope._

The memory changed again, and they saw Harry laying on the dirty floor of a hut while a storm raged outside.

_BOOM._

_The whole shack shivered and Harry sat bolt upright, staring at the door. Someone was outside, knocking to come in._

_BOOM. They knocked again. Dudley jerked awake. _

"_Where's the cannon?" he said stupidly._

_There was a crash behind them and Uncle Vernon came skidding into the room. He was holding a rifle in his hands - now they knew what had been in the long, thin package he had brought with them._

"_Who's there?" he shouted. "I warn you - I'm armed!" There was a pause. Then - SMASH! The door was hit with such force that it swung clean off its hinges and with a deafening crash landed flat on the floor._

_A giant of a man was standing in the doorway. His face was almost completely hidden by a long, shaggy mane of hair and a wild, tangled beard, but you could make out his eyes, glinting like black beetles under all the hair._

_The giant squeezed his way into the hut, stooping so that his head just brushed the ceiling. He bent down, picked up the door, and fitted it easily back into its frame. The noise of the storm outside dropped a little. He turned to look at them all._

"_Couldn't make us a cup o' tea, could yeh? It's not been an easy journey..." He strode over to the sofa where Dudley sat frozen with fear._

"_Budge up, yeh great lump," said the stranger._

_Dudley squeaked and ran to hide behind his mother, who was crouching, terrified, behind Uncle Vernon._

"_An' here's Harry!" said the giant._

_Harry looked up into the fierce, wild, shadowy face and saw that the beetle eyes were crinkled in a smile._

"_Las' time I saw you, you was only a baby," said the giant. "Yeh look a lot like yet dad, but yeh've got yet mum's eyes." Uncle Vernon made a funny rasping noise._

"_I demand that you leave at once, sir!" he said. "You are breaking and entering!"_

"_Shut up, Dursley, yeh great prune," said the giant; he reached over the back of the sofa, jerked the gun out of Uncle Vernon's hands, bent it into a knot as easily as if it had been made of rubber, and threw it into a corner of the room._

_Uncle Vernon made another funny noise, like a mouse being trodden on._

"_Anyway - Harry," said the giant, turning his back on the Dursleys, "a very happy birthday to yeh. Got summat fer yeh here - I mighta sat on it at some point, but it'll taste all right." From an inside pocket of his black overcoat he pulled a slightly squashed box. Harry opened it with trembling fingers. Inside was a large, sticky chocolate cake with Happy Birthday Harry written on it in green icing._

_Harry looked up at the giant. He meant to say thank you, but the words got lost on the way to his mouth, and what he said instead was, "Who are you?" The giant chuckled._

"_True, I haven't introduced meself. Rubeus Hagrid, Keeper of Keys and Grounds at Hogwarts." He held out an enormous hand and shook Harry's whole arm._

"_What about that tea then, eh?" he said, rubbing his hands together. "I'd not say no ter summat stronger if yeh've got it, mind." His eyes fell on the empty grate with the shriveled chip bags in it and he snorted. He bent down over the fireplace; they couldn't see what he was doing but when he drew back a second later, there was a roaring fire there. It filled the whole damp hut with flickering light and Harry felt the warmth wash over him as though he'd sunk into a hot bath._

_The giant sat back down on the sofa, which sagged under his weight, and began taking all sorts of things out of the pockets of his coat: a copper kettle, a squashy package of sausages, a poker, a teapot, several chipped mugs, and a bottle of some amber liquid that he took a swig from before starting to make tea. Soon the hut was full of the sound and smell of sizzling sausage. Nobody said a thing while the giant was working, but as he slid the first six fat, juicy, slightly burnt sausages from the poker, Dudley fidgeted a little. Uncle Vernon said sharply, "Don't touch anything he gives you, Dudley." The giant chuckled darkly._

"_Yer great puddin' of a son don' need fattenin' anymore, Dursley, don' worry." He passed the sausages to Harry, who was so hungry he had never tasted anything so wonderful, but he still couldn't take his eyes off the giant. _

_Finally, as nobody seemed about to explain anything, he said, "I'm sorry, but I still don't really know who you are." The giant took a gulp of tea and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand._

"_Call me Hagrid," he said, "everyone does. An' like I told yeh, I'm Keeper of Keys at Hogwarts - yeh'll know all about Hogwarts, o' course."_

"_Er - no," said Harry._

_Hagrid looked shocked._

"_Sorry," Harry said quickly._

"_Sorry?" barked Hagrid, turning to stare at the Dursleys, who shrank back into the shadows. "It' s them who should be sorry! I knew yeh weren't gettin' yer letters but I never thought yeh wouldn't even know abou' Hogwarts, fer cryin' out loud! Did yeh never wonder where yet parents learned it all?"_

"_All what?" asked Harry._

"_ALL WHAT?" Hagrid thundered. "Now wait jus' one second!" He had leapt to his feet. In his anger he seemed to fill the whole hut. The Dursleys were cowering against the wall._

"_Do you mean ter tell me," he growled at the Dursleys, "that this boy - this boy! - knows nothin' abou' - abou' ANYTHING?" Harry thought this was going a bit far. He had been to school, after all, and his marks weren't bad._

"_I know some things," he said. "I can, you know, do math and stuff." But Hagrid simply waved his hand and said, "About our world, I mean. Your world. My world. Yer parents' world." _

"_What world.?" Hagrid looked as if he was about to explode._

"_DURSLEY!" he boomed._

_Uncle Vernon, who had gone very pale, whispered something that sounded like "Mimblewimble." Hagrid stared wildly at Harry._

"_But yeh must know about yet mum and dad," he said. "I mean, they're famous. You're famous." _

"_What? My - my mom and dad weren't famous, were they?" _

"_Yeh don' know... yeh don' know..." Hagrid ran his fingers through his hair, fixing Harry with a bewildered stare._

"_Yeh don' know what yeh are,"" he said finally._

_Uncle Vernon suddenly found his voice._

"_Stop!" he commanded. "Stop right there, sir! I forbid you to tell the boy anything!" A braver man than Vernon Dursley would have quailed under the furious look Hagrid now gave him. When Hagrid spoke, his every syllable trembled with rage._

"_You never told him. Never told him what was in the letter Dumbledore left fer him. I was there! I saw Dumbledore leave it, Dursley! An' you've kept it from him all these years." _

"_Kept what from me?" said Harry eagerly._

"_STOP! I FORBID YOU!" yelled Uncle Vernon in panic. Aunt Petunia gave a gasp of horror._

"_Ah, go boil yet heads, both of yeh," said Hagrid. "Harry - yer a wizard." There was silence inside the hut. Only the sea and the whistling wind could be heard._

"_- a what?" gasped Harry._

"_A wizard, o' course," said Hagrid, sitting back down on the sofa, which groaned and sank even lower, "an' a thumpin' good'un, I'd say, once yeh've been trained up a bit. With a mum an' dad like yours, what else would yeh be? An' I reckon it's abou' time yeh read yer letter."_

_Harry stretched out his hand at last to take the yellowish envelope, addressed in emerald green to Mr. H. Potter, The Floor, Hut-on-the-Rock, The Sea. He pulled out the letter and read: _**HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY Headmaster: ALBUS DUMBLEDORE (Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock, Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards) **

**Dear Mr. Potter, We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.**

**Term begins on September 1. We await your owl by no later than July 31.**

**Yours sincerely, Minerva McGonagall, Deputy Headmistress **

The memory seemed to fast-forward.

"_Where was I?" said Hagrid, but at that moment, Uncle Vernon, still ashen-faced but looking very angry, moved into the firelight._

"_He's not going," he said._

_Hagrid grunted._

"_I'd like ter see a great Muggle like you stop him," he said._

"_A what?" said Harry, interested._

"_A Muggle," said Hagrid, "it's what we call non-magic folk. An' it's your bad luck you grew up in a family o' the biggest Muggles I ever laid eyes on." _

"_We swore when we took him in we'd put a stop to that rubbish," said Uncle Vernon, "swore we'd stamp it out of him! Wizard indeed!"_

"_You knew," said Harry. "You knew I'm a - a wizard?" _

"_Knew!" shrieked Aunt Petunia suddenly. "Knew! Of course we knew! How could you not be, my dratted sister being what she was. Oh, she got a letter just like that and disappeared off to that-that school - and came home every vacation with her pockets full of frog spawn, turning teacups into rats. I was the only one who saw her for what she was - a freak! But for my mother and father, oh no, it was Lily this and Lily that. They were proud of having a witch in the family!" She stopped to draw a deep breath and then went ranting on. It seemed she had been wanting to say all this for years._

"_Then she met that Potter at school and they left and got married and had you, and of course I knew you'd be just the same, just as strange, just as-as - abnormal - and then, if you please, she went and got herself blown up and we got landed with you!" _

_Harry had gone very white. As soon as he found his voice he said, "Blown up? You told me they died in a car crash!" _

"_CAR CRASH!" roared Hagrid, jumping up so angrily that the Dursleys scuttled back to their corner. "How could a car crash kill Lily an' James Potter? It's an outrage! A scandal! Harry Potter not knowin' his own story when every kid in our world knows his name!"_

The scene shifted again to show Harry at the train station.

_They reached King's Cross at half past ten. Uncle Vernon dumped Harry's trunk onto a cart and wheeled it into the station for him. Harry thought this was strangely kind until Uncle Vernon stopped dead, facing the platforms with a nasty grin on his face._

"_Well, there you are, boy. Platform nine - platform ten. Your platform should be somewhere in the middle, but they don't seem to have built it yet, do they?" He was quite right, of course. There was a big plastic number nine over one platform and a big plastic number ten over the one next to it, and in the middle, nothing at all._

"_Have a good term," said Uncle Vernon with an even nastier smile. He left without another word. Harry turned and saw the Dursleys drive away._

_All three of them were laughing._

The next memory showed a slightly older Harry.

_Aunt Petunia was just passing around a box of after-dinner mints when a huge barn owl swooped through the dining room window, dropped a letter on Mrs. Mason's head, and swooped out again. Mrs. Mason screamed like a banshee and ran from the house shouting about lunatics. Mr. Mason stayed just long enough to tell the Dursleys that his wife was mortally afraid of birds of all shapes and sizes, and to ask whether this was their idea of a joke._

_Harry stood in the kitchen, clutching the mop for support, as Uncle Vernon advanced on him, a demonic glint in his tiny eyes._

"_Read it!" he hissed evilly, brandishing the letter the owl had delivered._

"_Go on - read it!"_

_Harry took it. It did not contain birthday greetings._

**Dear Mr. Potter, We have received intelligence that a Hover Charm was used at your place of residence this evening at twelve minutes past nine.**

**As you know, underage wizards are not permitted to perform spells outside school, and further spellwork on your part may lead to expulsion from said school (Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery, 1875, Paragraph C).**

**We would also ask you to remember that any magical activity that risks notice by members of the non-magical community (Muggles) is a serious offense under section 13 of the International Confederation of Warlocks' Statute of Secrecy.**

**Enjoy your holidays! **

**Yours sincerely, Mafalda Hopkirk, IMPROPER USE OF MAGIC OFFICE, Ministry of Magic**

_Harry looked up from the letter and gulped._

"_You didn't tell us you weren't allowed to use magic outside school," said Uncle Vernon, a mad gleam dancing in his eyes. "Forgot to mention it... Slipped your mind, I daresay ..."_

_He was bearing down on Harry like a great bulldog, all his teeth bared. "Well, I've got news for you, boy... I'm locking you up... You're never going back to that school ... never ... and if you try and magic yourself out - they'll expel you!" And laughing like a maniac, he dragged Harry back upstairs._

_Uncle Vernon was as bad as his word. The following morning, he paid a man to fit bars on Harry's window. He himself fitted a cat- flap in the bedroom door, so that small amounts of food could be pushed inside three times a day. They let Harry out to use the bathroom morning and evening. Otherwise, he was locked in his room around the clock._

Another memory formed, and they saw a rather large woman talking about Harry.

"_Now, this one here -" She jerked her head at Harry, who felt his stomach clench. The Handbook, he thought quickly. "This one's got a mean, runty look about him. You get that with dogs. I had Colonel Fubster drownone last year. Ratty little thing it was. Weak. Underbred." Harry was trying to remember page twelve of his book: A Charm to Cure Reluctant Reversers. "It allcomes down to blood, as I was saying the other day. Bad blood will out. Now, I'm saying nothing against your family, Petunia," she patted Aunt Petunia's bony hand with her shovel-like one, "but your sister was a bad egg. They turn up in the best families. Then she ran off with a wastrel and here's the result right in front of us." Harry was staring at his plate, a funny ringing in his ears. Grasp your broom firmly by the tail, he thought. But he couldn't remember what came next. Aunt Marge's voice seemed to be boring into himlike one of Uncle Vernon's drills. "This Potter," said Aunt Marge loudly, seizing the brandy bottle and splashing more into her glassand over the tablecloth, "you never told me what he did?" _

_Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia were looking extremely tense. Dudley had even looked up from hispie to gape at his parents. "He - didn't work," said Uncle Vernon, with half a glance at Harry. "Unemployed."_

"_As I expected!" said Aunt Marge, taking a huge swig of brandy and wiping her chin on her sleeve. "A no-account, good-for-nothing, lazy scrounger who -"_

"_He was not," said Harry suddenly. The table went very quiet. Harry was shaking all over. He had never felt so angry in his life. _

"_MORE BRANDY!" yelled Uncle Vernon, who had gone very white. He emptied the bottle into Aunt Marge's glass. "You, boy," he snarled at Harry. "Go to bed, go on -" _

"_No, Vernon," hiccuped Aunt Marge, holding up a hand, her tiny bloodshot eyes fixed on Harry's. "Go on, boy, go on. Proud of your parents, are you? They go and get themselves killed in a car crash (drunk, expect) -" _

"_They didn't die in a car crash!" said Harry, who found himself on his feet. _

"_They died in a car crash, you nasty little liar, and left you to be a burden on their decent, hardworking relatives!" screamed Aunt Marge, swelling with fury._

As they rose from the pensieve and landed back in the Defense classroom, James looked over at Lily and saw her face, stained with tears.

**To be continued...**

...

A/N: This chapter is going to be in two parts, so keep watching for the second half.


	9. Memories of a Future Life II

1A/N: Hey everybody! Here's Part II of my chapter Memories of a Future Life.

...

Harry sat at his desk while his mother cried into his father's chest. James was holding her close and whispering soothing words in her ear, but he looked near tears as well. Harry glanced over at Ginny. She gave him a look and a smile that seemed to say "they'll be fine." He looked over at Remus and Sirius, the latter of whom seemed to be deep in thought. Remus also had a very pained expression on his face. As Lily started to finally calm down, it seemed Sirius decided to speak his mind.

"I just have one question," he said, looking at Harry. "Why didn't you come to stay with me? I _was _made godfather, wasn't I?" Harry sighed.

"That's a long story, Sirius, and one I'm not sure you'll like hearing."

"I want to know," he said, bravely. "I want to know what happens to me." Harry shared another look with Ginny. She just nodded.

"Alright then. You were sent to Azkaban for something you didn't do." They all gasped, and Harry continued. "You were there for 12 years, but then you broke out. You're still the only person whose ever done it, actually. Anyway, you broke out and went after the person who had committed the crime you were imprisoned for so that you could prove your innocence." Harry paused, lost in thought. "It never happened; you never cleared you're name. You stayed on the run for a year before you rejoined the Order of the Phoenix and lent them your house for headquarters. That was the summer before my 5th year.

"5th year was a terrible year; Voldemort was on the rise, killing innocent people, but the Ministry refused to believe it, you hated being stuck in your old house, unable to do anything, and we had a Ministry woman that refused to teach us Defense. The Minister believed that Dumbledore was trying to build an army. So we took matters into out own hands and formed a secret Defence group, the D.A." Harry pulled a strand of memory from his temple and placed it in the pensieve. Then he tapped it with his wand and two girls rose from it's depths: Ginny and Cho.

_ "The Defence Association?" said Cho. "The DA for short, so nobody knows what we're talking about?'' _

_ "Yeah, the DA's good," said Ginny. "Only let's make it stand for Dumbledore's Army, because that's the Ministry's worst fear, isn't it?"_

"I taught everyone what she refused to teach us," said Harry. "That was also the year that I foundout how powerful her bat-bogey hex was." He shivered. "Anyways, I'm off topic. I found out that year that Voldemort and I had a connection from when he tried to kill me. I felt it when he was really happy or angry, and I sometimes got visions in the form of nightmares. It didn't take long for him to realize that I was seeing inside his mind. He used it to his advantage." Harry got really quiet all of a sudden. "I'm ashamed to say that he tricked me. He planted lies inside my head. I saw you with him in the Department of Mysteries. He was hurting you; using the Cruciatus Curse. I felt like I had to save you. So Ginny and I, along with my friends Ron, Hermione, Neville, and Luna, left for the Ministry. It was only once we got there and saw the Death Eaters that we realized it was a trick." He paused again.

"I am so sorry, Sirius," he whispered. The four of them were listening with rapt attention, and Harry could tell that they knew what was coming next. "The Order came to our rescue, you included. You couldn't stay behind when you knew I was in danger. You were amazing. You all were. You told me to run, and then you started duelling Bellatrix..." he trailed off. "Dumbledore came, and you two were the only ones still duelling. She taunted you, and you were laughing at her. You died laughing."

Ginny, seeing the look on Harry's face, told the group, "Harry still blames himself for what happened. I'll tell you now, though, that that bitch got what she deserved." She brought her wand to her temple, then, and placed the memory in the pensieve. Three girls and a crazy-looking woman rose, and Harry could tell that they were duelling.

"_NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH!" Mrs. Weasley threw off her cloak as she ran, freeing her arms. Bellatrix spun on the spot, roaring with laughter at the sight of her new challenger.  
>"OUT OF MY WAY!" shouted Mrs. Weasley to the three girls, and with a swipe of her wand she began to duel. Harry watched with terror and elation as Molly Weasley's wand slashed and twisted, and Bellatrix Lestrange's smile faltered and became a snarl. Jets of light flew from both wands, the floor around the witches' feet became hot and cracked; both women were fighting to kill.<br>"No!" Mrs. Weasley cried as a few students ran forward, trying to come to her aid. "Get back! Get back! She is mine!"  
>Hundreds of people now lined the walls, watching the two fights, Voldemort and his three opponents, Bellatrix and Molly, and Harry stood, invisible, torn between both, wanting to attack and yet to protect, unable to be sure that he would not hit the innocent.<br>"What will happen to your children when I've killed you?" taunted Bellatrix, as mad as her master, capering as Molly's curses danced around her. "When Mummy's gone the same way as Freddie?"  
>"You-will-never-touch-our-children-again!" screamed Mrs. Weasley. Bellatrix laughed, the same exhilarated laugh her cousin Sirius had given as he toppled backward through the veil, and suddenly Harry knew what was going to happen before it did. Molly's curse soared beneath Bellatrix's outstretched arm and hit her squarely in the chest, directly over her heart. Bellatrix's gloating smile froze, her eyes began to bulge: For the tiniest space of time she knew what had happened, and then she toppled, and the watching crowd roared, and Voldemort screamed<em>. 

Sirius gaped open-mouthed as they vanished back into the pensieve. "Molly did that? She couldn't hurt a fly!"

"Yeah," said Ginny, "but she had just lost a child and didn't want to lose another one.

...

A/N: So I know that this is a crappy ending, but I decided I'd do a three-part chapter. The next part is going to be about Remus, and I'll try to get it written as soon as I can. Hope you all liked this chapter!


	10. Memories of a Future Life III

1A/N: Hey guys! I am so so so sorry for taking so long to get this up! I know it's taken me forever. But here it is. Hope you like it!

...

If there was one thing Harry hated about being in the past, it was having to tell everyone that they were going to die. The look on everyone's faces when they found out what was in store for Sirius was terrible. No one deserved his fate. And things were about to get worse with the questions he was sure to come from Remus. As if reading his mind, Remus chose that time to speak.

"I die too, don't I? It was me you were talking about the other day. I'm the werewolf." Harry smiled sadly.

"You're too smart for your own good, Remus." He looked at the others and realized that while they all looked shocked to find out that they were to lose yet another friend, Remus seemed to accept it with no questions asked.

"So - so that means - you said - I have a son?"

"Yes," said Harry. "I may as well tell you the whole story. I met you on the train in my third year; I'm still not sure why you took the train. Anyway, you were the new Defence teacher, and Ron, Hermione, and I shared a compartment with you because everywhere else was full. You were asleep, though, and we didn't know who you were. About halfway through the train ride we stopped. Everything went cold and it felt like all of the happiness was being sucked from the world. Then we saw the dementors. I heard screaming and I passed out, but before I did, I saw you stand and cast your patronus. The next thing I knew, we were moving again and you were giving me chocolate.

"You taught me a lot that year. I went to you and asked you to teach me how to defend myself against dementors. They were surrounding the school that year because of Sirius' escape from Azkaban. You started me off with a boggart, since mine takes the shape of a dementor. It took a lot of hard work, but eventually I managed to produce a corporeal patronus. I'm sure you were surprised when it took the form of Prongs. There was only one problem with you being a teacher; you couldn't come to class during the full moon. So we had Snape -"

"Snape!" Burst out Sirius. "Snape's a teacher?" They all looked surprised; everyone except Lily.

"I expect he teaches potions," she said. "He's amazing in that class."

"You're right, Lily," said Harry. "He did teach potions. But he always wanted the Defense position. Anyway, Snape taught us when Remus was away for the full moon; taught us about werewolves and assigned us an essay on them. He hoped someone would figure it out. It was Hermione who did, but she didn't tell anyone, not even me and Ron. One night, we were down at Hagrid's hut, because his pet Hippogriff was going to be put down, and Ron was attacked by a big black dog. It took him to the Shrieking Shack, and Hermione and I followed. There we found Sirius, transformed back into a man. We were scared because at that point, we didn't know he was innocent. But then you arrived, and we thought we were saved. Until you hugged Sirius like an old friend. That's when Hermione dropped the bomb about you being a werewolf.

"Long and short of it is, Hermione and I went back in time, saved Sirius three times, ran away from werewolf-Remus, and saved Buckbeak the Hippogriff. It was an eventful night. Anyway, after that, Snape 'let slip' that you were a werewolf and you decided to resign. I didn't see much of you again until my 5th year, when Dumbledore had restarted the Order. That's where you met Tonks."

"Wait," said Sirius. "You can't mean little Dora, my cousin, who is five years old?" Harry nodded.

"The one and only," he said, before extracting a memory and tapping the pensieve with his wand. A young woman with violet hair emerged, as did a much older-looking Remus. This Remus was covered in scars and looked tired and rather ill. Memory-Remus began to speak.

_"And this is Nymphadora -"_

_ "_Don't _call me Nymphadora, Remus," said the young witch with a shudder, "it's Tonks."_

_ "Nymphadora Tonks, who prefers to be known by her surname only," finished Lupin._

_ "So would you if your fool of a mother had called you _Nymphadora_," muttered Tonks._

Remus looked horrified, whether because of his obvious shabbiness, or because of his obviously-much-younger wife, Harry couldn't tell. "Don't worry," he said. "You aren't married yet. That doesn't happen for almost two more years." Remus didn't look any better. "Anyway, on with the story. I saw you a few times that year, during the holidays. You fought at the Ministry with me and held me back when Sirius - when Sirius was killed. I wanted to go after him, try to save him, but you told me that he was beyond hope.

"My 6th year, you went undercover for the Order, trying to get the werewolves on our side. You looked terrible, always miserable, but if you looked bad, Tonks looked worse. You were pushing her away, and you kept telling her that you were too old, too poor, and too dangerous."

"It was after my brother, Bill, was attacked by Greyback that you finally let her in," said Ginny, adding a memory to the pensieve. From it's depths rose several people crowded around a bed in which a young man with long red hair and many gashes across his face lay. Among the crowd were an older Remus and Tonks, the latter of whom looked sickly and pale, and a beautiful girl with silvery hair that was dabbing ointment on Bill's wounds.

_"You see!" said a strained voice. Tonks was glaring at Lupin. "She still wants to marry him, even though he's been bitten! She doesn't care!" _

_ "It's different," said Lupin, barely moving his lips and looking suddenly tense. "Bill will not be a full werewolf. The cases are completely -" _

_ "But I don't care either, I don't care!" said Tonks, seizing the front of Lupin's robes and shaking them. "I've told you a million times. . . ." And the meaning of Tonks's patronus and her mouse-coloured hair, and the reason she had come running to find Dumbledore when she had heard a rumour that someone had been attacked by Greyback, all suddenly became clear to Harry; it had not been Sirius that Tonks had fallen in love with after all._

_ "And I've told you a million times," said Lupin, refusing to meet her eyes, staring at the floor, "that I am too old for you, too poor... too dangerous..." _

_ "I've said all along you're taking a ridiculous line on this, Remus," said Mrs. Weasley over Fleur's shoulder as she patted her on the back.  
>"I am not being ridiculous," said Lupin steadily. "Tonks deserves somebody young and whole." <em>

_ "But she wants you," said Mr. Weasley, with a small smile. "And after all, Remus, young and whole men do not necessarily remain so." He gestured sadly at his son, lying between them._

"You got married that summer," said Harry, continuing the story. "I wasn't there; you had to keep it small and quiet due to the prejudice against werewolves, but Tonks was overjoyed. Then you found out that Tonks was pregnant." At this point, Remus' face had paled considerably, and he was now looking a bit green. "You were horrified, thinking that your child would be born a werewolf, and you offered to help me on my quest to defeat Voldemort. I called you a coward for even considering leaving your wife alone while she was pregnant. Hermione yelled at me afterwards, but it was exactly what you needed. You went back to Tonks and saw your son born, and he wasn't a werewolf. We were at Bill's when he was born. You came rushing in with a picture, and you asked me to be his godfather. You were so happy."

Harry picked up a picture frame from his desk and turned it to show them. They all watched as Harry picked up a little boy and swung him around and turning to face the camera. Ginny was also in the picture, smiling at Harry and the boy. "That's Teddy," said Harry. "That picture was taken on his second birthday. They watched as Teddy scrunched up his face and turned his hair from Harry's black to Ginny's red. Remus nearly fell over in shock.

"He's a metamorphmagus?" he asked. Harry nodded.

"He takes after his mum. Anyway, on with the story. Soon after Teddy was born, you were called to Hogwarts for the Final Battle. Tonks had initially agreed to stay home with Teddy, but she couldn't bear leaving you to fight without her, so she left him with her mother and joined the battle. You were killed by Dolohov, and she was killed by Bellatrix Lestrange. You both fought so hard..." Harry paused, collecting himself.

"What I'm about to show you is something that I haven't shown anyone other than Ginny." He pulled a memory from his temple and placed it in the pensieve, before touching the surface and disappearing. He landed on the grounds of Hogwarts, late at night. The others appeared beside him. Ginny looked near tears, knowing what she was soon going to see.

_ Harry swung the Cloak back over himself and walked on. Someone eyes was moving not far away, stooping over another prone figure on the ground. He was feet away from her when he realized it was Ginny. He stopped in his tracks. She was crouching over a girl who was whispering  
>for her mother.<em>

"_It's all right," Ginny was saying. "It's okay. We're going to get you inside."_

_"But I want to go home," whispered the girl. "I don't want to fight anymore!"_

_"I know," said Ginny, and her voice broke. "It's going to be all right."_

"Leaving Ginny was the hardest thing I have ever done," said Harry. "I wanted her to know that I was there; where I was going. I wanted to be stopped, to be dragged back, to be sent back home where I could be safe and away from Voldemort."

_Ginny was kneeling beside the injured girl now, holding her hand. With a huge effort Harry forced himself on. He thought he saw Ginny look around as he passed, and wondered whether she had seen someone walking nearby, but he did not speak, and he did not look back._

_He could no longer control his own trembling. It was not, after all, so easy to die. Every second he breathed, the smell of the grass, the cool air on his face, was so precious: To think that people had years and years. Time to waste, so much time it dragged, and he was clinging to each second. At the same time he thought that he would not be able to go on, and knew that he must. The long game was ended, the Snitch had been caught, it was time to leave the air..._

_The Snitch. His nerveless fingers fumbled for a moment with the pouch at his neck and he pulled it out._

_'I open at the close.'_

_Breathing fast and hard, he stared down at it. Now that he wanted time to move as slowly as possible, it seemed to have sped up, and understanding was coming so fast it seemed to have bypassed thought. This was the close. This was the moment. He pressed the golden metal to his lips and whispered, "I am about to die." The metal shell broke open. He lowered his shaking hand, raised Draco's wand beneath the Cloak, and murmured, "Lumos."_

"The Resurrection Stone," said Harry."Turn it three times in your hand and you have the power to see the dead."

_The black stone with its jagged crack running down the centre sat in the two halves of the Snitch. The Resurrection Stone had cracked down the vertical line representing the Elder Wand. The triangle and circle representing the Cloak and the stone were still discernible. And again Harry understood without having to think. It did not matter about bringing them back, for he was about to join them. He was not really fetching them: They were fetching him._

_He closed his eyes and turned the stone over in his hand three times. He knew it had happened, because he heard slight movements around him that suggested frail bodies shifting their footing on the earthly, twig-strewn ground that marked the outer edge of the forest. He opened his eyes and looked around. They were neither ghost nor truly flesh; he could see that. They resembled  
>most closely the Riddle that had escaped from the diary so long ago, and he had been memory made nearly solid. less substantial than living bodies, but much more than ghosts, they moved toward him, and on each face, there was the same loving smile.<em>

_James was exactly the same height as Harry. He was wearing the clothes in which he had died, and his hair was untidy and ruffled, and his glasses were a little lopsided, like Mr. Weasley's.  
>Sirius was tall and handsome, and younger by far than Harry had seen him in life. He loped with an easy grace, his hands in his pockets and a grin on his face. Lupin was younger too, and much less shabby, and his hair was thicker and darker. He looked happy to be back in this familiar place, scene of so many adolescent wanderings. Lily's smile was widest of all. She pushed her long hair back as she drew close to him, and her green eyes, so like his, searched his face hungrily, as though she would never be able to look at him enough.<em>

_"You've been so brave."_

_He could not speak. His eyes feasted on her, and he thought that he would like to stand and look at her forever, and that would be enough. _

"_You are nearly there," said James. "Very close. We are... so proud of you."_

_"Does it hurt?" The childish question had fallen from Harry's lips before he could stop it.  
><em>

"_Dying? Not at all," said Sirius. "Quicker and easier than falling asleep."  
><em>

"_And he will want to be quick. He wants it over," said Lupin._

_"I didn't want you to die," Harry said. These words came without his volition. "Any of you. I'm sorry."  
>He addressed Lupin more than any of them, beseeching him. "Right after you'd had your son... Remus, I'm sorry."<em>

_"I am sorry too," said Lupin. "Sorry I will never know him... but he will know why I died and I hope he will understand. I was trying to make a world in which he could live a happier life."_

_A chilly breeze that seemed to emanate from the heart of the forest lifted the hair at Harry's brow. He knew that they would not tell him to go, that it would have to be his decision._

_"You'll stay with me?"_

_"Until the very end," said James._

_"They won't be able to see you?" asked Harry.  
><em>

"_We are part of you," said Sirius. "Invisible to anyone else."_

_Harry looked at his mother. "Stay close to me," he said quietly. And he set off. The dementors' chill did not overcome him; he passed through it with his companions, and they acted like patronuses to him, and together they marched through the old trees that grew closely together, their  
>branches tangled, their roots gnarled and twisted underfoot. Harry clutched the Cloak tightly around him in the darkness, travelling deeper and deeper into the forest, with no idea where exactly Voldemort was, but sure that he would find him. Beside him, making scarcely a sound, walked James, Sirius, Lupin, and Lily, and their presence was his courage, and the reason he was<br>about to keep putting one foot in front of the other._

_His body and mind felt oddly disconnected now, his limbs working without conscious instruction, as if he were passenger, not driver, in the body he was about to leave. The dead who walked beside him through the forest were much more real to him now than the living back at the castle: Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and all the others were the ones who felt like ghosts as he stumbled and slipped toward the end of his life, toward Voldemort._

"You see, I had to die. I was the seventh Horcrux." Lily gasped. Harry was not surprised that she was the only one who knew what it was. At the others' bewildered looks, Lily explained.

"A horcrux is an object in which you conceal a piece of your soul."

"_I thought he would come," said Voldemort in his high, clear voice, his eyes on the leaping flames. "I expected him to come."_

_Nobody spoke. They seemed as scared as Harry, whose heart was now_ _throwing itself against his ribs as though determined to escape the body he was about to cast aside. He hands were sweating as he pulled off the Invisibility Cloak and stuffed it beneath his robes, with his wand. He did not want to be tempted to fight._

_"I was, it seems... mistaken," said Voldemort._

_"You weren't."_

_Harry said it as loudly as he could, with all the force he could muster. He did not want to sound afraid. The Resurrection Stone slipped from between his numb fingers, and out of the corner of his eyes he saw his parents, Sirius, and Lupin vanish as he stepped forward into the relight. At that moment he felt that nobody mattered but Voldemort. It was just the two of them._

_The illusion was gone as soon as it had come. The giants roared as the Death Eaters rose together, and there were many cries, gasps, even laughter. Voldemort had frozen where he stood, but his red eyes had found Harry, and he stared at Harry moved toward him, with nothing but the fire between them._

_Then a voice yelled, "HARRY! NO!"_

_He turned: Hagrid was bound and trussed, tied to a tree nearby. His massive body shook the branches overhead as he struggled, desperate._

_"NO! NO! HARRY! WHAT'RE YEH - ?"_

_"QUIET!" shouted Rowle, and with a flick of his wand Hagrid was silenced. Bellatrix, who had leapt to her feet, was looking eagerly from Voldemort to Harry, her breast heaving. The only things that moved were the flames and the snake, coiling and uncoiling in the glittering cage behind Voldemort's head._

_Harry could feel his wand against his chest, but he made no attempt to draw it. He knew that the snake was too well protected, knew that if he managed to point the wand at Nagini, fifty curses would hit him first. And still, Voldemort and Harry looked at each other, and now Voldemort tilted his head a little to the side, considering the boy standing before him, and a singularly  
>mirthless smile curled the lipless mouth.<em>

_"Harry Potter," he said very softly His voice might have been part of the splitting fire. "The Boy Who Lived."_

_None of the Death Eaters moved. They were waiting: Everything was waiting. Hagrid was struggling, and Bellatrix was panting, and Harry thought inexplicably of Ginny, and her blazing look, and the feel of her lips on his. _

_Voldemort had raised his wand. His head was still tilted to one side, like a curious child, wondering what would happen if he proceeded. Harry looked back into the red eyes, and wanted it to happen now, quickly, while he could still stand, before he lost control, before he betrayed fear. He saw the mouth move and a ash of green light, and everything was gone._

_He lay face down, listening to the silence. He was perfectly alone. Nobody was watching. Nobody else was there. He was not perfectly sure that he was there himself. _

_A long time later, or maybe no time at all, it came to him that he must exist, must be more than disembodied thought, because he was lying, definitely lying, on some surface. Therefore he had a sense of touch, and the thing against which he lay existed too._

_Almost as soon as he had reached this conclusion, Harry became conscious that he was naked. Convinced as he was of his total solitude, this did not concern him, but it did intrigue him slightly. He wondered whether, as he could feel, he would be able to see. In opening them, he discovered that he had eyes._

_He lay in a bright mist, through it was not like mist he had ever experienced before. His surroundings were not hidden by cloudy vapour; rather the cloudy vapour had not yet formed into surroundings. The floor on which he lay seemed to be white, neither warm nor cold, but simply there, a flat, blank something on which to be._

_He sat up. His body appeared unscathed. He touched his face. He was not wearing glasses anymore. Then a noise reached him through the unformed nothingness that sur rounded him: the small,soft thumpings of something that flped, flled, and sruggled. It was a pitiful noise, yet also slight indecent. He had the uncomfortable feeling that he was eavesdropping on something furtive, shameful._

_For the first time, he wished he were clothed._

_Barely had the wish formed in his head than robes appeared a short distance away. He took them and put them on. They were soft, clean, and warm. It was extraordinary how they had appeared just like that, the moment he had wanted them..._

_He stood up, looking around. Was he in some great Room of Requirement? The longer he looked, the more there was to see. A great domed glass roof glittered high above him in sunlight. Perhaps it was a palace. All was hushed and still, except for those odd thumping and whimpering noises coming from somewhere close by in the mist... _

_Harry turned slowly on the spot, and his surroundings seemed to invent themselves before his eyes. A wide-open space, bright and clean, a hall larger by far than the Great Hall, with that clear domed glass ceiling. It was quite empty. He was the only person there, except for- _

_He recoiled. He had spotted the thing that was making the noise. It had the form of a small, naked child, curled on the ground, its skin raw and rough, flayed-looking, and it lay shuddering under a seat where it had been left, unwanted, stuffed out of sight, struggling for breath._

_He was afraid of it. Small and fragile and wounded though it was, he did not want to approach it. Nevertheless he drew slowly nearer, ready to jump back at any moment. Soon he stood near enough to touch it, yet he could not bring himself to do it. He felt like a coward. He ought to comfort it, but it repulsed him._

"_You cannot help."_

_He spun around. Albus Dumbledore was walking toward him, sprightly and upright, wearing sweeping robes of midnight blue._

_"Harry," He spread his arms wide, and his hands were both whole and white and undamaged._

"_You wonderful boy. You brave, brave man. Let us walk."_

_Stunned, Harry followed as Dumbledore strode away from where the flayed child lay whimpering, leading him to two seats that Harry had not previously noticed, set some distance away under that high, sparkling ceiling. Dumbledore sat down in one of them, and Harry fell into the other, staring at his old__headmaster's face. Dumbledore's long silver hair and beard, the piercingly blue eyes behind half-moon spectacles, the crooked nose: Everything was as he had  
>remembered it. And yet...<em>

_"But you're dead." said Harry._

_"Oh yes," said Dumbledore matter-of-factly._

_"Then... I'm dead too?"_

_"Ah," said Dumbledore, smiling still more broadly. "That is the question, isn't it? On the whole, dear boy, I think not." They looked at each other, the old man still beaming._

_"Not?" repeated Harry._

_"Not," said Dumbledore._

_"But..." Harry raised his hand instinctively towards the lightning scar. It did not seem to be there. "But I should have died. I didn't defend myself! I meant to let him kill me!"_

_"And that," said Dumbledore, "will, I think, have made all the difference." Happiness seemed to radiate from Dumbledore like light, like fire: Harry had never seen the man so utterly, so palpably, content._

_"Explain," said Harry._

_"But you already know," said Dumbledore. He twiddled his thumbs together._

_"I let him kill me," said Harry. "Didn't I?"_

_"You did," said Dumbledore, nodding. "Go on!"_

_"So the part of his soul that was in me..." Dumbledore nodded still more enthusiastically, urging Harry onward, a broad smile of encouragement on his face. "...has it gone?"_

_"Oh yes!" said Dumbledore. "Yes, he destroyed it. Your soul is whole, and completely your own, Harry."_

_"But then..." Harry glanced over his shoulder to where the small, maimed creature trembled under the chair. "What is that, Professor?"_

"_Something that is beyond either of our help," said Dumbledore._

_"But if Voldemort used the Killing Curse," Harry started again "and nobody died for me this time, how can I be alive?"_

_"I think you know," said Dumbledore. "Think back. Remember what he did, in his ignorance, in his greed and his cruelty."_

_Harry thought. He let his gaze drift over his surroundings. If this was indeed a palace in which they sat, it was an odd one, with chairs set in little rows and bits of railing here and there, and still, he and Dumbledore and the stunted creature under the chair were the only beings there. Then the answer rose to his lips easily, without effort._

_"He took my blood," said Harry._

_"Precisely!" said Dumbledore. "He took your blood and rebuilt his living body with it! Your blood in his veins, Harry, Lily's protection inside both of you! He tethered you to life while he lives!"_

_"I live... while he lives! But I thought... I thought it__was the other way around! I thought we both had to die? Or is it the same thing?"_

_He was distracted by the whimpering and thumping of the agonized creature behind them and glanced back at it yet again. "Are you sure we can't do anything?"_

_"There is no help possible."_

_"Then explain... more," said Harry, and Dumbledore smiled._

_"You were the seventh Horcrux, Harry, the Horcrux he never meant to make. He had rendered his soul so unstable that it broke apart when he committed those acts of unspeakable evil, the murder of your parents, the attempted killing of a child. But what escaped from that room was even less than he knew. He left more than his body behind. He left part of himself latched to  
>you, the would-be victim who had survived.<em>

_"And his knowledge remained woefully incomplete, Harry! That which Voldemort does not value, he takes no trouble to comprehend. Of house-elves and children's tales, of love, loyalty, and innocence. Voldemort knows and under stands nothing. Nothing. That they all have a power beyond his own, a power beyond the reach of any magic, is a truth he has never grasped._

_"He took your blood believing it would strengthen him. He took into his body a tiny part of the enchantment your mother laid upon you when she died for you. His body keeps her sacrifice alive, and while that enchantment survives, so do you and so does Voldemort's one last hope for himself."_

_Dumbledore smiled at Harry, and Harry stared at him._

_"And you knew this? You knew all along?"_

_"I guessed. But my guesses have usually been good," said Dumbledore happily, and they sat in silence for what seemed like a long time, while the creature behind them continued to whimper and tremble._

_"There's more," said Harry. "There's more to it. Why did my wand break the wand he borrowed?"_

_"As to that, I cannot be sure."_

_"Have a guess, then," said Harry, and Dumbledore laughed._

_"What you must understand, Harry, is that you and Lord Voldemort have journeyed together into realms of magic hitherto unknown and unprecedented, and no wandmaker could, I think, ever have predicted it or explained it to Voldemort._

_"Without meaning to, as you now know, Lord Voldemort doubled the bond between you when he returned to a human form. A part of his soul was still attached to yours, and, thinking to strengthen himself, he took a part of your mother's sacrifice into himself. If he could only have understood the precise and terrible power of that sacrifice, he would not, perhaps, have dared to touch  
>your blood... But then, if he had been able to understand, he could not be Lord Voldemort, and might never have murdered at all.<em>

_"Having ensured this two-fold connection, having wrapped your destinies together more securely than ever two wizards were joined in history, Voldemort proceeded to attack you with a wand that shared a core with yours. And now something very strange happened, as we know. The cores reacted in a way that Lord Voldemort, who never knew that your wand was a twin of his, had never expected._

_"He was more afraid than you were that night, Harry. You had accepted, even embraced, the possibility of death, something Lord Voldemort has never been able to do. Your courage won, your wand overpowered his. And in doing so, something happened between those wands, something that echoed the relationship between their masters._

_"I believe that your wand imbibed some of the power and qualities of Voldemort's wand that night, which is to say that it contained a little of Voldemort himself. So your wand recognized him when he pursued you, recognized a man who was both kin and mortal enemy, and it regurgitated some of his own magic against him, magic much more powerful than anything Lucius's wand had ever performed. Your wand now contained the power of your enormous courage and of Voldemort's own deadly skill: What chance did that poor stick of Lucius Malfoy's stand?"_

_"But if my wand was so powerful, how come Hermione was able to break it?" asked Harry._

_"My dear boy, its remarkable effects were directed only at Voldemort, who had tampered so ill-advisedly with the deepest laws of magic. Only toward him was that wand abnormally powerful. Otherwise it was a wand like any other... though a good one, I am sure," Dumbledore finished kindly.  
>Harry sat in thought for a long time, or perhaps seconds. It was very hard to be sure of things like time, here.<em>

_"He killed me with your wand."  
>"He failed to kill you with my wand," Dumbledore corrected Harry. "I think we can agree you are not dead though, of course," he added, as if fearing he had been discourteous, "I do not minimize your sufferings, which I am sure were severe."<em>

_"I feel great at the moment, though," said Harry, looking down at his clean, unblemished hands._

The memory fast-forwarded.

"_I've got to go back, haven't I?"_

_"That is up to you."_

_"I've got a choice?"_

_"Oh yes." Dumbledore smiled at him. "We are in King's Cross, you say? I think that if you decided not to go back, you would be able to... let's say... board a train."_

_"And where would it take me?"_

_"On," said Dumbledore simply._

_Silence again._

_"Voldemort's got the Elder Wand."_

_"True. Voldemort has the Elder Wand."_

_"But you want me to go back?"_

_"I think," said Dumbledore, "that if you choose to return, there is a chance that he may be finished for good. I cannot promise it. But I know this, Harry, that you have less to fear from returning here than he does."_

_Harry glanced again at the raw-looking thing that trembled and choked in the shadow beneath the distant chair._

_"Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and above all, those who live without love. By returning, you may ensure that fewer souls are maimed, fewer families are torn apart. If that seems to you a worthy goal, then we say good-bye for the present."_

_Harry nodded and sighed. Leaving this place would not be nearly as hard as walking into the forest had been, but it was warm and light and peaceful here, and he knew that he was heading back to pain and the fear of more loss.  
>He stood up, and Dumbledore did the same, and they looked for a long moment into each other's faces.<em>

_"Tell me one last thing," said Harry. "Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?"_

_Dumbledore beamed at him, and his voice sounded loud and strong in Harry's ears even though the bright white mist was descending again, obscuring his figure._

_"Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should  
>that mean that it is not real?"<em>

"I didn't have to go back," said Harry. "I didn't want to at first. The thought of being with all of you... I wanted it. But then I thought of Ginny, and Ron and Hermione, and the Weasley's and Neville and Luna and Teddy. I wanted to be with them. So I went back."

By the end of the whole story, Lily was in tears. She went up to Harry and hugged him.

"Harry, I can't - I can't believe you went through all of that. You are so brave."

"Thanks Mum," he whispered. "I think you all need to go to bed now. It's been a long night." They all nodded and headed for the door. Once they had left, Harry turned to Ginny. "I'm so glad I came back to you," he said before kissing her.

...

A/N: I have had a few comments on the fact that I'm using a lot of memory scenes from the books. I apologize if you're getting fed up with it. From now on, I am going to do my best not to use it. There are some parts of the story that I just thought it added to.


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